I lack the time to write this in extended form, so this will be kind of a bullet-pointed vignette version. As some posts by others have asked a question this seeks to gesture towards an answer to, I hope Mike will let it remain:
1) Forest vs. Trees: I understand the correctly-founded urge to divide this topic into, first, accusations of intimidation via legal and doxxing threats, and second, the Adachi Incident. As a means of figuring out what happened, (and moderating the thread fairly), that makes sense.
2) But it also loses something. Because taken together, the whole picture points to an underlying reason this thread has longevity and interest. 8DIO is a business. What kind?
3) We on VI-C and elsewhere compose with technologically mediated tools. Instrument making in this space has a personality and two broad craftsmanship types. I'll crudely call them: A) Parade of Shiny Objects; and B) Deep Flexibility. Most major devs have produced libraries exhibiting both kinds of craftsmanship. Some have only released one kind. The catalogues of some have a rather high ratio of A to B.
4) Businesses, including sample devs, change over time as their capacities change. Some have what I'd call an extractive phase, with a lot of A)s released to keep the lights on and/or enable future development, followed by a more contributive phase, high points where B) increases or dominates. Flagship products, classics. Pace Nick
@Quantum Leap , Hollywood Orchestra seems to qualify as the latter.
6) Henson (Spitfire), apparently had a bad experience here and left. I don't know the details of that. From a distance, however, it appears that he absorbed certain insights faster than did others and changed SF's posture accordingly: This is an arts community. There is commerce. But its raison d'etre is arts and expressive material and collaboration. Without that, it's a dreary mall. Spitfire still releases shiny objects here and there, but there is a new community of contributors, small devs and artists, funded and unfunded, but all promoted by various means. Ecosystem. Art House. Some of 8dio's actions have been very un-Art House.
7) Adachi was a TON of work to make. A ton. I've done this kind of work. It requires a rigorous and forensic ear and a borderline autistic level of commitment to detail. There is "Love," the HR/PR version, and then there is The Love, which is commitment to the unseen artists who will use these tools by providing them maximum flexibility and expressiveness. To my mind, Adachi is one of the clearest examples of The Love in recent memory. Calling it a "fan project" and "taking advantage of someone else's work" sent up all sorts of red flags.
8) A sample dev must keep the lights on. If part of that involves 1) recording the session 2) editing and coding in a time-restricted, disciplined way and 3) releasing and moving on to the next project, then so be it.
9) But a corollary to 8 is: if someone is willing to do the tedious, time-consuming and exacting work to get the instrument from category A) to B), above, without infringing on your rights and also increasing your likely sales by improving the expressiveness of the library, they should be able to do that and to sell it for what the market will bear. This seems obvious and highly topical to me. Urs Heckmann (U-He, Diva, etc etc.) for example, does not get defensive when someone rearranges his material and sells products that rely on his own products, which users still must buy, in order to work. They're called patch libraries. Users know what they're getting. There will be hits and misses. Homebrews are fine. Musicians are craftspeople. Not mall patrons.
10) Lastly and, bear with me here: The Bay Area is a character in this story. I was there in tech for more than a decade, and Silicon Beach for another. "When Troels and Tawnia met in Silicon Valley...." If someone had said to me any time in the last decade, "hey, I'm going to start a sample development company in the Bay Area!" I would have replied "You're a crazy person and that is a crazy, unsustainable idea, but good luck." The place brings out the best and the worst in human beings because the economics and the culture compel it. Fish don't know they're wet. Best place to come up with a new sample playback technology for Soundpaint? Probably. But definitely not the only one. And maybe not the best one given where music sits in the big picture now. There are costs beyond the monetary to needing one's elbows to be that sharp and one's profit margin that high, and to the decisions one feels obligated to make.
11) The proof of work is in the output. Soundpaint exists now. Worth the alleged abusive behavior? No way. The future is unwritten: I like Soundpaint's potential. When sample libraries are developed and/or modified for it specifically, I think it will come into its own. But how it will be deployed in a business model is still an open question. Will it be another case of proprietary consolidation of profit, artistic credit and control? That remains to be seen. At this moment, given the way this thread has played out, given the evidence of all behaviors described and exhibited by 8DIO up to this point, the signs are not good. There is commerce; yet this is an arts community. The wise will instantiate the former solidly in the context of the latter.
