I would explore the use of a reaper type business model and take Andrew down a notch by showing him you have the balls to take your product back and redesign it enough to legally be able to rebrand the code and release it that way.

By taking the old code and selling it after a significant addition and redesign of your earlier products he would have to accept that situation since a newer altered code may be something you can get away with offering via such a business model since you technically are not selling the product but giving it away free and asking for donations.

Plus by using Reapers business model you become instantly a hero to every bedroom producer that cannot afford your product line and there are millions of them so they would probably support you and with millions of people contributing in some small way like through a Patreon portal I would think that you would do very well financially, you certainly can't do any worse, from what it sounds like to me.

Or you could create a light version to give away free and sell the upgraded version. I never saw you guys use a lite version give away strategy and that may work.

Personally I would take the reaper path and ask for a suggested donation so that you get paid voluntarily by the pros and the hobbyists would work to spread the word about your product so you get something back by doing it that way.

Then on your newer products you could charge for them and those who used your reaper business model products would seek to pay for that to support you by buying your fully commercialized product line which you could then say is a way to pay for the older coded product line as well if you are a pro. That way you provide multiple ways to gain access to licensed versions.

Example: Buy the newer product and get a pro license of the older product line.

The reaper business model may be a more profitable way to do business because many more millions of bedroom producers would want to support you with a $5 donation here and there. The economics of that response would potentially offer much greater financial rewards to you than selling a product that never gets sold because it is far too costly for most to purchase.

 

I understand all your logic, but Reaper may not be the right example, as it's not donationware, or did I miss something?
To support your reasoning, Analog Obsession would be a better example IMHO.

 

Yawn. In most cases of this kind, there are two or more people saying they are totally right.

I don't know why customers should be interested in such details . They're only interested in whether development/operations is going ahead or not.
The whole discussion here just gives the impression of a marital quarrel being fought out in public. This does not! increase trust, but rather decreases it!
The only thing that could improve trust now would be a joint declaration of both parties that the trouble has been settled and the business will continue in one form or another.
If that is not possible: keep quiet and keep on working as usual..

 

guys, thanks for the input.

1) regarding the idea of releasing 2C products with minimum redesign for free or as a donationware for 5$.
I considered this idea but had to reject it. Even though that would have stopped 2C sales the long term consequences are disasterous.
Because this way I would nullify investments of people who purchased 2C products until oct'21 for which I received my profit share from sales. There are 10,000+ 2C users and on average one paid about 150$. Most of them are professionals. These people paid to me. I simply cannot let them down and make 200$ product a 5$ one. These people would question me.

2) I'm working on new plug-in gui/dsp sdk that would be free of Andrew's code so that my plug-ins would be completely legally clean.
over past 1.5 years I've been working on generic gpu engine that has wide spectrum of applications. one of it is a programmable modular synth that works in spectrum domain. I believe GPU is the future of audio because it's powerful, cheap and it's easy to distrubute workloads over network and the same source code can be compiled and run on large number of systems that support OpenCL 1.2.
Also I'm doing research in reverbs. And I'd like to re-create SpinAudio products that I developed in 2000-2005. Anyone who is interested in betatesting can email me at: [email protected]

3) I might use donationware scheme for the first alpha/beta version of the gpu synth because i'd like people to explore new approaches to audio synthesis and processing that GPU allows

 

F.cking money grabber this Mr. Andrew Souter if you ask me.

 

It all sounds very good, really.
I see that you have clear idea of what you're going to do, and respect for your clients, so I can only wish you the best of luck.
I'm not able to have an opinion about GPU synth, but the idea is at least new and seems promising.
Once you'll have a new product, count on us ( at least on me) to promote it.

 

what should the current owner of the company inform his customers about? I would say it's his prerogative to decide what communications he should make. i guess you're not part of the company so how can you speak for a company that you're not in ownership of? a corporation is like a ship. you have to be on the ship and you have to be in the chain of command to have a say. that's nothing personal by the way.

even if he was selling an empty box of software that was full of zeroes, that's his choice, if he wanted to do that crime then it's on him. how is it going to impact you if he did something like that? if he stole from you, you should go to the legal system. are you out trying to get revenge? the best revenge is to just do some good work and be successful, and don't invite him to be the ceo of your new company!

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2022

1. 2CAudio LLC was registered as legal entity only around march 2020. Before that date we have had no formal agreement between us. We were just selling through Andrew's web shop. Every month since the sales start in 2008 until dec'2021 Andrew provided me with sales reports that contained all user purchase details, my profit share explicitly stated and the calculated amount due. This is an evidence of sharing profits and losses which is by US Law a definition of a joint business in case there is no legal agreement between parties

2. All 2CAudio software that Andrew still sales online has been developed PRIOR to the company registration. There is zero software developed by 2CAudio LLC. What is the legal status of the joint code then? Who owns that software? Could he show a document by which he obtained all these rights?

3. When we decided to register a joint company and make a legal agreement (which was my initiative) we discussed that we first register a company for him only and I would join the board later because I would have to get a legal advise on how to properly manage taxes when I get a share in US company (because special regulations apply in this case for me). So we made and signed some temp agreement that looked like a contractual job. But even with this agreement the basis for calculating my money was those reports. And then covid hit and things slowed down significantly and then in dec'20 Andrew decided to arrest my money. Yes you can say that it's my fault that I signed such an agreement. But in no nightmare I could imagine that my partner who made a pretty good amount of money from my code especially for the first 8 years could suddeny deteriorate to such a moral level that he could turn this agreement against me and arrest my personal money.

4. So legally yes Andrew is the sole owner of 2CAudio LLC but he has no ownership rights on my code because I've never sold my code to him.

5. Legal battling in US is pretty expensive. I simply could not afford that at the moment

On a side note some users reported to me recently that Mr. Souter does not reply to their support emails. If there are 2C users here please let me know if you had sucessful communication with Andrew over past couple of months. thanks in advance

 

wait you did SpinAudio? i remember those https://web.archive.org/web/20000608043238/http://www.spinaudio.com/products.html.
i never understood 2caudio, the website was purposefully confusing, their galbanum connection i didnt understand, a 3d enhanced gfx mess.

revive the spinaudio brand.

 

I'm sorry, but what do you want?

 

That is correct. I'm the man behind SpinAudio along with another guy who I invited to work with me and who unfortunetly ruined the company to the ground by his hostile actions to me.

Re-viving SpinAudio plug-ins is what I'm doing now.
anyone who has experience in betatesting and would like to take part could email me at [email protected]
All SpinAudio users will get the renovated versions for free.

2CAudio was confusing I totally agree. Unfortunately I did not actively promote my interests and my view (until recently) on how to organize sales, site etc. I was trying but since I was totally concentrated on coding I had no much energy left to agrue with Mr. Souter. Before starting 2CA with Mr Souter I had 5 years experience of running a software biz with SpinAudio doing marketing, sales, site, customer support etc in addition to coding and I learned a lot. However Mr. Souter managed to deceive me that he is superior in all those areas simply because he graduated from a good US biz school and was a voting member of Grammy Commitee.

 

>I'm sorry, but what do you want?

1) I want that potential 2CA customers are informed about the situation about 2CA and make respective decisions.
Mr. Souter in march claimed that he would support users and update products but so far he has been only collecting money.
Having double income from sales he could have hired system coder to do the much anticipated updates. This means that there is high chance that the products they purchased will not be supported/updates. They have a vested right to know that especially given that the official site keeps silence about the troubles

2) I want 2CA users to notice that if they want the products they use to be updated and further supported I'm possibly the best candidate for that since I'm the author of more than 90% of the codebase, especially given that I already re-coded the vector dsp engine in a way that supports M1. Maybe all together we can press Mr. Souter to let us know if he is going to do the updates or not. If he has no intention to do so it would be wise to handle all that to me. If users have no interest, ok, no problem, I can make other plug-ins. I just wanted to let them know that I can do the updates they want.

That's it

 

I did that couple of weeks ago, didn't get any "thanks for your application" kind of mail, I'm very hurt (

 

could you resend again? I think I replied to all requests.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 13, 2022

ok, I see your email again. probably my initial reply went to your spam folder.

 

This is a typical story of any joint venture

 

do you own the code?

 

I own my part of the joint code that was developed purely by me. however some parts of the joint code are so intermixed (ie both parties contributed to it) that's not possble to split them into separate usable parts and the status of this code in undefined. This is why I'm now re-writing everything from scratch for my new plug-ins. I respect other people's property rights.

 

with regard to whatever progress you're making on your own work, i suggest to put it on a wordpress blog or something so folks can follow along with your new pursuits. i'm not interested in the past or the 2C stuff or that other guy, although I realize it's a bad experience you had. i recommend forgiving him for his failures and move on, focusing on what you're really interested in. we've shared in your traumatic experience and now we too have to heal from the painful story. so the sooner you forgive and move on the better. you want the public to focus on your advancements in the science of audio technology not to focus on negative things that are in the past. your domain says under construction last i checked, why not put a blog there that says hello world and share your progress on your work? link us up on a youtube or an instagram. I'm not a lawyer but I advise to cool it with any talk about potential legal issues. The more you say, the less leverage you have really.

 

Godspeed to you good sir. May your every future venture be a beautiful success.