Christian:
I do understand the distinction you make regarding owning samples and having licensed usage of a sample library. What I wrote was, clearly, inexact on this point. My aim was to make clear to the writers whose views I disagreed with that, although I'd paid the normal price for this license, I would not feel that its value was lessened if licenses were made available to educational institutions at lower prices. My argument was with those who claim that the value of the Vienna Instruments Library would somehow be less if it were available to educational institutions for less than they paid - - not with VSL. Perhaps what I said was a little edged because I, frankly, have little sympathy with those who presume to judge a thing's merit on the basis of its high price tag or because it has, in their minds, an ambience of "exclusivity."
For me, the Vienna Library is a powerful musical instrument whose value stems from its musical excellence - - not the price of its license. At the same time, I think I have some appreciation of the immense amount of initiative, effort, intellect and imagination that went in to making it what it is and I think the folks at VSL have every right to expect to be well rewarded for creating such a product. It is also very apparent to me that the making VSL libraries was driven by valuing musical excellence - - there are, after all, less arduous ways of making money.
Please don't take anything I've said as a criticism of VSL. I understand that allowing an individual to donate licenses to an educational institution is not allowed by your current policy. What I and some other writers in this thread wanted to suggest is that there might be some constructive alternatives to the current policy that VSL might consider at some point.
You bring up some points I had not thought of regarding support and updates. But, playing devil’s advocate, I’d ask what if continued support and updates were not part of the deal? As I mentioned earlier in the thread, one of my former students recently was able to purchase Logic from his school's bookstore (again, to be exact, he only bought a license) at a price significantly less than Apple's published "educational" price (through an agreement between his school and Apple). BUT, buying it at this price specifically excluded his eligibility for any future upgrades. Similarly if I decided to donate my piano to an educational institution, neither I - - nor Steinway - - would be obligated to provide tunings, replacement parts, etc. Many people continue to use older versions of software for long periods of time forgoing continued support and upgrades. I, for example, paid for the last two updates to Finale (2006 and 2007) but these proved so buggy, that I continue to use Finale 2005 and plan to keep my G5 as long as there is no, more current, version of Finale that demonstrates the reliability I need. Since you said, that you didn’t "want to know on how many servers of various universities or P2P networks we would find VSL files already," I wanted to suggest a way of making this illegitimate use less likely - by creating a legitimate path for donations of semi-obsolete software and charging a reasonable fee for transferring the license – with either a specific exclusion of continued support and upgrades or a continuing yearly subscription fee if support and upgrades were to be made available. That would, at least in theory, also be a way of enlarging the legitimate user base and promoting future sales. Perhaps I am wrong about all this, perhaps it wouldn’t work, but it is a suggestion -- not a "demand" -- based on good will towards VSL and an appreciation of your work and your products. I apologize if I, inadvertently, gave any other impression.
I do understand the distinction you make regarding owning samples and having licensed usage of a sample library. What I wrote was, clearly, inexact on this point. My aim was to make clear to the writers whose views I disagreed with that, although I'd paid the normal price for this license, I would not feel that its value was lessened if licenses were made available to educational institutions at lower prices. My argument was with those who claim that the value of the Vienna Instruments Library would somehow be less if it were available to educational institutions for less than they paid - - not with VSL. Perhaps what I said was a little edged because I, frankly, have little sympathy with those who presume to judge a thing's merit on the basis of its high price tag or because it has, in their minds, an ambience of "exclusivity."
For me, the Vienna Library is a powerful musical instrument whose value stems from its musical excellence - - not the price of its license. At the same time, I think I have some appreciation of the immense amount of initiative, effort, intellect and imagination that went in to making it what it is and I think the folks at VSL have every right to expect to be well rewarded for creating such a product. It is also very apparent to me that the making VSL libraries was driven by valuing musical excellence - - there are, after all, less arduous ways of making money.
Please don't take anything I've said as a criticism of VSL. I understand that allowing an individual to donate licenses to an educational institution is not allowed by your current policy. What I and some other writers in this thread wanted to suggest is that there might be some constructive alternatives to the current policy that VSL might consider at some point.
You bring up some points I had not thought of regarding support and updates. But, playing devil’s advocate, I’d ask what if continued support and updates were not part of the deal? As I mentioned earlier in the thread, one of my former students recently was able to purchase Logic from his school's bookstore (again, to be exact, he only bought a license) at a price significantly less than Apple's published "educational" price (through an agreement between his school and Apple). BUT, buying it at this price specifically excluded his eligibility for any future upgrades. Similarly if I decided to donate my piano to an educational institution, neither I - - nor Steinway - - would be obligated to provide tunings, replacement parts, etc. Many people continue to use older versions of software for long periods of time forgoing continued support and upgrades. I, for example, paid for the last two updates to Finale (2006 and 2007) but these proved so buggy, that I continue to use Finale 2005 and plan to keep my G5 as long as there is no, more current, version of Finale that demonstrates the reliability I need. Since you said, that you didn’t "want to know on how many servers of various universities or P2P networks we would find VSL files already," I wanted to suggest a way of making this illegitimate use less likely - by creating a legitimate path for donations of semi-obsolete software and charging a reasonable fee for transferring the license – with either a specific exclusion of continued support and upgrades or a continuing yearly subscription fee if support and upgrades were to be made available. That would, at least in theory, also be a way of enlarging the legitimate user base and promoting future sales. Perhaps I am wrong about all this, perhaps it wouldn’t work, but it is a suggestion -- not a "demand" -- based on good will towards VSL and an appreciation of your work and your products. I apologize if I, inadvertently, gave any other impression.
