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VVVV – A hybrid visual/textual development environment for .NET
- yodon 2y agoSigh, another cool looking project where a programmer who knows nothing about licensing wrote their own license, and made their project unusable by anyone. Good lawyers aren't automatically good programmers, and good programmers aren't automatically good lawyers. There is a reason why the Open Source community has standardized around a small set of licenses, and a reason why most attempts at writing new licenses end up in sadness.
- g15jv2dp 2y agoI can't even find the text of their license anywhere.
- cess11 2y ago"vvvv can be used freely without any limitations for the following purposes: Evaluation Non-commercial use FOSS development Contribution development Teaching and learning vvvv" For all other cases you go to https://store.vvvv.org/ https://store.vvvv.org/ .
- chii 2y agoBasically, a classic case of trying to use the opensource monika for marketing purposes, whilst trying to retain the ability to make money off the popularity when/if it does happen. That's why if an "opensource" software does not use one of the standard OSS approved licenses, it is just shareware by another name.
- iamacyborg 2y agoJust fyi, the word is moniker, not monika.
- cess11 2y agoThey've been doing this since the late nineties or so. I think they consider their licensing model proven to work for them by now.
- spacechild1 2y ago> Basically, a classic case of trying to use the opensource monika for marketing purposes, vvvv does not claim anywhere to be open source. > whilst trying to retain the ability to make money off the popularity when/if it does happen. vvvv has been around for about 25 years. I would suggest to do a bit more research before jumping to conclusions. BTW, they do open source quite a few components under proper OSS licenses: https://github.com/vvvv https://github.com/vvvv
- omoikane 2y agoAnd it says "pattern pending", probably should have been "patent pending". But the same text has been there since 2020, so maybe it's intentional. https://web.archive.org/web/20200401215651/https://visualprogramming.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200401215651/https://visualpro...
- pipeline_peak 2y agoAccording to whatever “TRUST” is, the seem pretty keen on their own rules. What if they don’t want anything else enforced by an existing license?
- yodon 2y agoWanting something, and writing a license that delivers what you want are two different things. They may know what they want, but that doesn't mean they know how to write a license that delivers what they want. "Do what I mean, not what I say" is not effective in either code or contracts.
- bowsamic 2y agoCan you explain what exactly about this license makes it unusable?
- fsloth 2y agoI would like a point for point critique as well, not all of us are experts in legal and commercial aspects of licensing. I’m embarrassed to admit my own working model is really limited as I’ve only worked in orgs where license issues were always somebody elses problem. I.e. somebody mandates which licenses can be used, and if there is a commercial offering you need to use, somebody else negotiates the terms and pricing.
- iamacyborg 2y agovvvv has been around for at least a decade (I recall looking at it when I was studying a digital arts degree in ‘09) so I doubt this is a problem in practice.
- spacechild1 2y ago> vvvv has been around for at least a decade 25 years
- iamacyborg 2y agoWhelp, that’s definitely at least a decade.
- Dayshine 2y agoWhat's unusual about a proprietary product which has a non commercial use carve out? That's pretty standard isn't it?
- as1mov 2y agoIndeed, I am confused what's so bad about this license? Commercial use requires buying a license, and free for non-commercial uses. The website isn't using some bait and switch pseudo open-source tactics too, it's pretty clear that the product is proprietary.
- spacechild1 2y ago> There is a reason why the Open Source community has standardized around a small set of licenses, What are you talking about? vvvv is proprietary software (and has been for about 25 years)
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- osigurdson 2y agoWiring programs together on a 2D canvas is nice when the problem being solved is amenable to it (signal processing, pipelines, etc.). But, a typical general purpose program would look like a breadboard from hell, no matter how hard one tries to organize nicely organize it.
- fsloth 2y agoThere are some domains where it’s really helpful to empower subject expert to develop their domain specific data flow, without them needing to learn the ins and outs of a language like c#. See for example Grasshopper for parametric architecture, or the node system in Blender. OFC maintainability of a spaghetti node system is borderline impossible so there are constraints and tradeoffs. Accessibility to non-software engineer domain talent is the main attraction imho.
- almost 2y agoThe solution to certain types of programs not being suitable to write in it is just… don’t. I did various bits of freelance work on VVVV projects a while ago. Often writing C++ or C# code to interface with VVVV. Even when I was mostly stuck in the guts of the C++ bit having a test rig in VVVV was a lovely way to interact with and test code. As far as I remember it’s absolutely simplicity to create a node that contains custom C# code (double click it and an editor window pops up). I definitely remember doing that for bits of logic that seemed easier to express that way. I saw people build very cool stuff in it back then. If you’re building interactive visuals the “always live” way of working seems to allow some pretty fast iteration. Definitely saw things built in it that maybe would have been better built in other ways, but that’s just natural when you have people highly skilled in one tool or language.
- jayd16 2y agoI don't really agree that visuals immediately makes things messier but I do wish these systems leveraged scoped areas a bit better to reduce pin visual noise. That said, you just have to treat it like code and build up good patterns and styles to keep things tidy.
- FireInsight 2y agoSeems to be an iteration of https://vvvv.org/ https://vvvv.org/
- jbl0ndie 2y agoIt's the same. I can't remember why they have two websites. Here's some earlier HN coverage and discussion of the same topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39469274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39469274
- ofrzeta 2y agoNot to be confused with VVVVVV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVVVVV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVVVVV
- drivers99 2y agoPreviously, there was a list of repeating (2 through 6 inclusive) v projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11842351
- SSchick 2y agoThe licensing seems.. atrocious (both the wording and pricing), maybe I'm too far disconnected from the space where such applications are used but. I'm unsure which industry would tolerate this.
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- DrSiemer 2y agoSpent a lot of time messing around with it a few years ago. The tutorials of Takuma Nakata are great and it's very powerful and versatile for creating cool experimental stuff. Not sure what the big problem with licensing is? Feels like some people just want everything in this space to be free. 500 euro for a lifetime license seems pretty generous to me, it's basically a small fee if you use it for any kind of commercial application.
- fsloth 2y agoIf the offering brings any value at all to development of a a commercial offering then 500 € is very reasonable. The point is it needs to improve something in your development flow that’s not available elsewhere, in terms of feature velocity, availability of talent, etc, not just curiosity. QT, Unity etc have price points in this zone and if I remember correctly are higher.
- DrSiemer 2y agoHave you actually seen VVVV? It's nothing like QT or Unity. It's a visual scripting tool, that does not require any real programming knowledge (although it definitely helps if you have some). One of our animators can't write code, but he made some interesting sketches with it. The program is very experimental in nature.
- Nullabillity 2y agoRelying on a commercial product means you don't have the source code, means you're dependent on where they move in the future, means you're screwed if they shut down.
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- voxic11 2y agoThat isn't true at all. Many commercial products are source code available including this one https://github.com/vvvv/VL.StandardLibs https://github.com/vvvv/VL.StandardLibs
- brcmthrowaway 2y agooh does this work for Lunyx
- whatever1 2y agoI desperately want visual programming to succeed. There must be a better way than text to make a program.
- conartist6 2y agoIt will! There is! Just hang on a moment : )
- jayd16 2y agoI don't think it'll overtake text but it's alive and well all over the place and especially in the game industry.
- wvenable 2y agoWritten language and mathematics have been around for thousands of years; Why must there must be better way than text to make a program? It's how humans communicate. It's how you're reading this right now. This comment wouldn't be better as a picture or as a YouTube video. In all my experience with visual programming over several decades has been awful and it's because it's the wrong medium for complex ideas.
- techdragon 2y agoIt’s about abstractions, and a lot of the time visual programming tools don’t get it right. Either they are too abstract and your limited to a set of nodes/blocks that are not powerful enough and adding more is challenging because the abstraction is so high there’s lots of overhead to get there, or the abstraction capabilities are too low and the ability to encapsulate and extend visually programmed code for reuse in other places or larger projects is hampered by the design. About the only “general purpose” visual programming language I’ve ever come across that is genuinely trying to be able to do all of it, is DRAKON https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON And even then, complexity can be a challenge because depending on how the software is architected the diagrams get unwieldy to read as more logic lives on a single layer… DRAKON does have a pair of little tricks that makes it a bit less confusing to work with than a lot of node based programming tools. The first is that lines cannot cross so you avoid the tangled knot diagram issue, the logical flow is relatively clear from your entry points to your exit or loop back to start. The second is that it serves as an abstraction to other programming languages, allowing for use of traditional tools and techniques to debug and analyse the output programs if needed, and then once you’ve identified the problem you can make changes to the diagram, export and then compile the program again after confirm your diagram changes had the desired results in the intermediate format. And before anyone asks what’s the point why not just program in the target language? First I’d like to point out that TypeScript is a thing, and then second I’d like to highlight that it was designed to aid in the comprehension and maintenance of algorithms in the aerospace software world, it’s meant to allow you to look at a diagram see the data flow and logical code paths and visually check that you haven’t forgotten things, heck you could confirm you had covered all your necessary conditions with some coloured pencils on a printout… which might feel foolish in an era of automated checking tools which we have today, but this was developed in the the Soviet Union in 1986 as part of the Buran space program, it solved their genuine needs for how to make checking code for correctness easier for humans, and has stuck around because even with automation it’s one of the few visual programming languages that managed to strike the balance between going to high level or giving too few tools for abstraction. Nothing is perfect of course, it has issues, like every programming language does, but it’s been a useful little tool from time to time when I needed to collaborate on fiddly algorithms with non-programming experts who understood what the software needed to be doing way better than I did, and I understood way better how to make the software do it than they did. I’d encourage anyone who ever gave visual programming a shot to check it out even just for the sake of curiosity, and possibly learning a useful new flowchart diagramming standard even if you never use the compiler.
- big_paps 2y agoThis looks very good. I shyed away from geometry nodes because i have no patience to learn all the 3d stuff and it seems a bit limited for use with custom code and houdini is far too complex. This seems like a good middleground..
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- sliq 2y agoi remember using it in early 2002 (due to this sticky name). wow, never expected to see this little masterpiece again
- poulpy123 2y agoto keep talking about the licence, I don't get a licence for a week at 200$
- chipsdip 2y agoI prefer cables.gl