Open letter

[Debby and Gene Stopp]

This I agree with - there is no profit in this field. The demand is pretty
low... The ASM-1 project pays for the batches of circuit boards, plus
shipping, plus time, with not much left over. Really just enough to allow me
to sneak a couple here and there into my own projects, which was my primary
goal. A batch of 50 costs more than some people's house payment. Shipping is
a large fraction of the cost - I don't charge for it at all, regardless of
the destination. Some times it's three bucks apiece, sometimes it's almost
twenty. There's no business intention involved, just helping out some people
to get a few free synth guts.

And what would I feel if somebody used the same circuits in their own
product? Happiness, flattery, maybe even humor. The VCO cores are Terry's,
from EN. The VCF is a standard, find the schematic anywhere state variable
using 3080's. If EN ever accuses me of infringement, I'll just say I ripped
it from the SEM. The ADSR's are completely mine, not even a single stolen
fragment. I would do them different now, by the way. The VCA's are from EN
too, but traceable to Walter Jung due to the 3080 pin 4 trick. The noise is
a wholesale copy from EN, but anybody could come up with exactly the same
thing from an op-amp databook. The LFO is pretty obvious too. I don't have
any feeling at all that EN (for example) would try to shut me down - for one
thing, I always give my sources.

I think that in this field, anybody who wants to pursue legal action due to
circuit stealing can't possibly be doing it for financial reasons - it would
have to be pure spite. Good Lord go ahead and carbon-copy a MemoryMoog plus,
and offer the xeroxed schematics for it too! Believe me, nobody will sue
you. And you will starve.

Okay that was just a silly example, but it's probably true. I really think
that we should all just do whatever we want, and use some engineering
responsibility when we quote our sources.

- Gene


-----Original Message-----
From: tomg <vco at mindspring.com>
To: don at till.com <don at till.com>
Cc: synth-diy at mailhost.bpa.nl <synth-diy at mailhost.bpa.nl>
Date: Thursday, April 08, 1999 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: Open letter


>
>Here's the deal...Ok ready for this...There is no money to be made on
>SDIY. You can lose some if you want...maybe break even if you are
>lucky but you can't make any...well maybe Gene has made some
>on his asm-1 but I bet it took a long time.
>