Q's: Registering as Developer

This forum is for discussing Reason. Questions, answers, ideas, and opinions... all apply.
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Raveshaper
Posts: 1089
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

01 Mar 2015

Scuzzy,

I used to do some work writing actionscript so I'm familiar with the concept of the namespaces being used. I've pieced together any online help for anything I sell is up to me to produce and make available. Do REs stop working if the host server of a developer's domain goes down temporarily?
:reason: :ignition: :re: :refillpacker: Enhanced by DataBridge v5

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buddard
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01 Mar 2015

QwaizanG wrote:Do REs stop working if the host server of a developer's domain goes down temporarily?
The REs will keep working.

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ScuzzyEye
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01 Mar 2015

As the Bean says, the unique name space is generated from the domain name provided, but it doesn't actually have any connection to a website, or anything Internet related at all. Using a domain name is simply an easy way to guarantee a unique name, or at least pass the uniqueness upstream to someone else (InterNIC in this case).

KEVMOVE02
Posts: 267
Joined: 26 Jan 2015

02 Mar 2015

QwaizanG wrote:I did, but the form requires a website so it denied my submission. I wonder if blogger would work for now. It's not like I'm going to be selling anything right away. Although I do like squarespace.
Why are you reluctant to buy a domain name?

electrofux
Posts: 862
Joined: 21 Jan 2015

03 Mar 2015

QwaizanG wrote:the business registration and liability aspects of being a developer that have very real economic impacts on the individuals who sign up makes me step back from registering.
Qft. The details are all too hidden for my taste. Putting out SW for money opens a big can of worms in the liability area which i don't really oversee.

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Faastwalker
Posts: 2281
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: NSW, Australia

03 Mar 2015

I always thought you needed to be a registered company to sign up as a developer. That was what people were telling me when I was interested in obtaining the RE SDK. Seemed a bit backwards to me because I wanted to see what I was letting myself in for before jumping through the hoops to register as a business. Anyway, I registered as a business to get my ABN (Australian Business Number) & then signed up. I used my ABN on the application form, though I don't recall if it was a mandatory field.

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Faastwalker
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Location: NSW, Australia

03 Mar 2015

QwaizanG wrote:I tried to register but it insists on having a developer site. It's just as well since I don't really feel comfortable giving out my SSN, but I'll look into setting up a site for a small fee somewhere. I've been thinking about setting up my own blog about CV experiments and the like so I'll investigate that. They don't say which kind of site you should have, so I'll be creative.
I put in my Facebook page, since I didn't have a website for my 'company'.


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Raveshaper
Posts: 1089
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

03 Mar 2015

Well, speaking of mandatory fields, the form clearly states that all fields marked with * are required. And none of them are marked, even when it tells you you forgot to entry something. Great, isn't it. A real vote of confidence.
:reason: :ignition: :re: :refillpacker: Enhanced by DataBridge v5

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Faastwalker
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Location: NSW, Australia

03 Mar 2015

QwaizanG wrote:Well, speaking of mandatory fields, the form clearly states that all fields marked with * are required. And none of them are marked, even when it tells you you forgot to entry something. Great, isn't it. A real vote of confidence.
I don't remember now as it was a while ago when I signed up. I remember being required to enter a Reverse Domain Developer ID!! :?

KEVMOVE02
Posts: 267
Joined: 26 Jan 2015

03 Mar 2015

So if I got this right, it's too hard to complete the application process, and you probably won't make much money before somebody sues you, so save your time and energy and don't even try?

avasopht
Competition Winner
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03 Mar 2015

KEVMOVE02 wrote:So if I got this right, it's too hard to complete the application process, and you probably won't make much money before somebody sues you, so save your time and energy and don't even try?
Who will sue you? I and many others have filled in the form, it's not that hard, just fill in the form :D

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Faastwalker
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Location: NSW, Australia

04 Mar 2015

Yonatan wrote:The problem is, since the new website, the apply-sheet for new developers have not been complete, so anyone trying to fill it out wanting to becoming a developer, will have a big "?" in their head, wondering what they are doing wrong.
Writing to Prop, getting no human reply, only automated message that they received your email.

So, we will have to wait and see...because no reverse domain can be filled, and no agreement you can read and accept...

If I were an important developer ready to work, I would get a very bad first impression about this. 
 
This wasn't my experience at all. It was painless to complete the process & I had several questions that were answered extremely quickly. I was approved as a dev within 24 hours of submitting the application. The small business research I did before signing up & applying for an ABN took much longer than the Propellerhead bit. I made a big of deal of it prior to signing up. But it wasn't a big deal at all .......


....... Now, if only I had an idea where to start with all the tools I downloaded!! I feel like a Propellerhead Intro to RE development online course is in order. I'd happily pay for such materials & resources. Even the IDT has me perplexed!! Bit of more than I can chew for sure. The problem is it's hard to find out anything about the SDK until you are a developer. And it's once you are a developer that you then find out you don't know what the fuck you are doing. Bit of a catch 22 & probably why Propellerhead claimed (some time ago now) to have over 800 developers signed up but there are only a tiny percentage of this amount actually doing anything.

electrofux
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Joined: 21 Jan 2015

04 Mar 2015

Imho they should make the SDK public and only if you want to sell stuff you should sign up as a company.

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Lizard
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Joined: 16 Jan 2015

04 Mar 2015

It would be great if the SDK was public but that is just the way Propellerheads operates.  I doubt they will ever change that.  Being that the Re SDK is under NDA it makes it difficult to discuss certain aspects but I'll say it again that signing up is easy.  Have a name (which can be changed) and a website (which can be changed) and you have access.  To register a domain name is a small fee.  Develop the site later.  You just need one.  Tax ID's or whatever required by your country/region can be established later.  You may never provide it while you are learning how to develop.  I have now started a fourth project and I have yet to legally establish my company.  But THIS will be required before SELLING.  You can build on your PC and learn how to develop locally on your PC.  No problems... well....depending.  ;)

@Faastwalker - It is easy to discouraged. All the tools are there but for the Non-programmer or those very minimally skilled in programming it is hard to find the path to follow to understanding.  My biggest complaint having lived it.  The forum is there to ask questions however.  I know there are many people out there who are reluctant to ask questions there.  I am one.  My fear is that many of my questions are remedial and I'll be thought an idiot.  :D   But I am beyond that now.  Not many are asking for me to learn from their questions so I'm just going to ask.  If more people on the IDT front asking there will be better info to draw from.  I am trying to put together the things I've learned to better help others with IDT in the future but I am still way too sophomoric in my understanding to feel comfortable releasing it publicly.  If any one of my projects get to market I'll feel better.  But keep moving forward and don't give up. It'll get better.

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Raveshaper
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05 Mar 2015

I'm not going to let a simple form submission obstruct me from becoming a developer.
The form is not what turns me off. I'll explain what does.

The main thing that really turns me off is that in addition to R being a closed loop, the entire approach to extending the possibilities within that loop is itself an even more closed loop. You would have a point if you countered by saying that no software developer wants people to have free access to their source code if they want to make sales, but that is not what access to the SDK does. You do not get a decompiled build of R in its full glory to restructure as you see fit or to cannibalize into your own sequencing/audio editing app. You get a debugging shell version for the purpose of making your own REs; modules that extend possibilities. The DIY and exploratory nature of R and its routing/patching scheme should invite and encourage participation in something like that and welcome those that are interested. Instead, it feels like either doubt or distrust of users who want more than what stock R can offer. A sense of being a troublemaker; as if a potential developer knows enough to say something about limitations of the program that drove them to create a solution and that might hurt sales, so discussing anything -- even for educational purposes -- is verboten. This restrictive atmosphere and locked gate policy toward people who just want to build something for themselves or learn more than what's in the manual bleeds out into the communities too. Even here.

I have already been warned to not even ask questions relating to topics that touch on documentation within the public domain on the grounds that it referred to SDK-related materials that violated the NDA -- which I have not signed yet, obviously. My question was related to mapping MIDI hardware, not the SDK. The thread was deleted. To rephrase that and simplify for more clarity, I asked a question, it related to material that is bundled with R and can be edited/repurposed by anyone, and I got told off -- gently. Such matters can be discussed inside the official dev forum, and there only. To simplify to the absolute extreme, I was not allowed to ask a question. Does not being able to ask a question, let alone educate myself and others based on what I've learned sound like a community-oriented policy? Is that the hidden definition of "different"?

(Here's an entire GitHub overflowing with the info I inexplicably can't talk about. It's bundled in your install.)

While I'm still on the topic of the trickle down effect of the culture surrounding PH, I very politely and eloquently responded with my confusion and misgivings about discussion of advanced topics at this forum. I received the PH branded ostrich response. It's been about a week now.

Contrast this experience with the unfair comparison of Ableton Live. An entire major subforum of the official Ableton forums is devoted to Max 4 Live discussions -- specifically aimed at increasing understanding of how to create custom devices. In the context of Live, that is their version of REs. But the difference is huge. You can discuss it. You can ask questions. You can learn. You can teach. It is a place for users to expand beyond the basic functions of Live and help each other solve the riddles of desired capabilities together. That is something that sounds more like what I want to be a part of. There, I can get help and help others. If I want to create an instructional tutorial video series that really goes under the hood on some useful stuff, I won't get my license suspended or my status revoked like I would if I became a dev with PH. Hell, they'd probably ask me permission to use one of my tutorials as a spotlight on their official channel if I made any. Maybe even offer to do a spot on techniques I use. Yeah, I'm being full of myself, but the point is it's at least plausible.

Edit: There are discussions on Native-Instruments' official forums about how to hack their hardware products using SysEx. Long troubleshooting threads that dig into accessing features of the hardware for user defined purposes. The N-I customers remain unsquashed.

I know that my experience here was independent of the company and was not an official response, but it is nonetheless the culture of the company. Because of this experience, I have decreased the rate of my inquiries here and have decided to bow out with a series of tutorial posts related to CV techniques/CV projects I've made but never shared. I also plan on doing a YouTube series on using stock devices as CV networks that I will eventually link here. Once I discovered that there was a cap on what I could learn, I could get in trouble for asking innocent questions, and no matter how much I learn through SDK access I can't educate anyone else about it who isn't already "in the club", I realized becoming a dev wasn't really my thing after all. I mean, that's a pretty cold culture that I don't want to buy into. It's a hard sell for me. A very, very hard sell.
:reason: :ignition: :re: :refillpacker: Enhanced by DataBridge v5

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ScuzzyEye
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05 Mar 2015

The reason the admins here don't want you asking questions that can only be answered by breaking the NDA is that someone might be tempted to break the NDA, and then they'd have to deal with that too.

Max isn't really the equivalent of Rack Extensions. Rack Extensions are like VSTs. Max is more like Combinators and CV routing, but with the ability to add some code to the mix.

What's the use of sharing stuff you learn about the SDK with people who can't do anything with that info?

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Raveshaper
Posts: 1089
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

05 Mar 2015

Now you're hitting it. When I asked about something that was part of the software, I walked unknowingly into a forbidden area. There was no way I could know that. It's an open scripting language and codecs for hardware controllers are written in it. I just asked a question because I wanted to learn about it. Totally blind sided by some invisible barrier.

The cultural message of Max is the meat, not it's features.

Yes, what is the use. Indeed.

Edit: I am terrible at tennis, never hit a serve in my life, so I'll leave it at this. As for me, I'm no longer interested. The secrecy, privacy, restricted topics that blur into the public domain; it's a policy toward information that hurts more than it helps. Ok, gee whiz. It's real super duper and we can't talk about it. The files bundled with the software are right there and given to every customer, but the subject matter revolving around their use or modification is untouchable. We can't talk about it so much that we can't even talk about what we can't talk about until someone paying attention goes and tries to talk about it. And then even though he's not in our not talking about things club, he may as well be inducted because he can't talk about it either. Because if we can't, then he can't.

I'm done. It's silly, sad, and I'm just done with the idea. But that's my take on things. Don't let me sour your milk.

Edit 2: Here's a brilliant concept: anyone who is registered to this cone of silence deal does not confirm, does not deny, does not participate in unregistered persons' speculative or homebrew MIDI codec reverse engineering threads. As it is, everyone is expected to abide a legal contract that only a select few have signed. And this place is independently run for crying out loud.
:reason: :ignition: :re: :refillpacker: Enhanced by DataBridge v5

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