With holding comment for now… Sorry
god dammit @sprocket12 i was in the middle of reading that seemingly well thought out and relatively diplomatic comment.
I look at this way. Dude needs to make money. We all got mouths to feed. Can’t blame anyone for that.
If you hit up Torqueboards and ask for a VESC, you will still get what you need. It’s sort of like going to Staples and saying you need a Xerox machine. They’ll show you copiers from a variety of manufacturers. That won’t change unless the name VESC goes out of fashion. Frank already said that BV hasn’t enforced the TM yet, so it’s not like people can’t keep selling product they have on their shelves as VESC’s. I think his point is that anyone currently selling VESC’s should stop working on promoting the name VESC and work on their own brand, so at which point BV decides to enforce the TM, you won’t be left in a bad situation.
It’s not like we’re talking about large companies who are hiring expensive PR firms to deal with these announcement and transitions. We’re talking small business owners doing it themselves for the first time. There’s no PR rep combing through every post before send is hit. You can’t expect everything to be done perfectly, just as none of us expected our first stab at a DIY board to come out perfect.
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Hah! Sorry. Too much lag between my reading old posts and didn’t want to seemingly dump on Trampa without catching up…
I’ll repost if the context still matches.
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Ok. I’ve spent enough time reading the thread to see where the spin is going. My earlier views still stand.
@Trampa, you seem to either not understand the minutia of the real concerns here or you are blatantly trying to manipulate the picture.
The community has literal blood, sweat, and tears in the maturing VESC. It is universally known by the this moniker. You have made a deal to be the sole proprietor of a ‘VESC’. There is a trust bound to this name as quality. This cannot be argued. We have all spoken of BV with great respect. You also cannot argue the point of bad VESC’s in the market giving ‘VESC’ a bad name. This would have already happened if it were the case. What does happen is the subpar company is blacklisted.
Now, back to you. You have taken the role of champion, but no one asked you to. If you had begun this as an open discussion, it would have been seen as worthy of support. What is smacks of now, and ever will, is greed on your part to control a burgeoning market. One poised to explode.
You have had ample time to clarify your stance. Your posts continue to spin the protection of TM’s for Ben. Gosh, that’s nice of you. Why spend all the $$$? What do you get in return? Sole proprietorship of the VESC name!
This tactic has been used in several other industries. In my trade, software engineering, it is called FUD (fear, uncertainty, and deception). Microsoft used it against and example you used earlier in the thread-- Linux.
A patent(?) lawyer made and earlier comment I agree with. VESC is already universally known and used. Good luck with litigating that one.
I’ll vote with my $$$. I won’t be rude, but I have lost faith in your company on how this has played out…
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i believe they call it Prior Art when the “method or device” is already in use and has widespread adoption and recognition. Basically nothing open source is patentable if the clerk does their due diligence.
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I wouldn’t blame him if he wasn’t being dishonest about it.
I must hav emissed that, but you should talk to the guys at esk8.de, @torqueboards, @onloop, etc. about whether Frank has enforced the TM yet. Because he has, before he even has a VESC on the shelf he is stopping others from selling what are known to be quality VESC’s.[quote=“Mrmoonlight, post:308, topic:23017”] You can’t expect everything to be done perfectly [/quote]
Dude, I don’t even expect it to be done with a modicum of skill. What I DO expect is for it to NOT be OK for someone to come in and take over a community built resource, stop other people from making them and selling them and then bitch and whine because we didn’t thank him for it.
I totally understand about giving people the benefit of the doubt, seeing the best intentions in people…but there are no good intentions here. Frank is putting other people out of business to increase his profit margin on a product he didnt help build. He has essentially stolen it.
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I built my boards and learned the name VESC with the resources from this forum and a bunch of YouTube videos. Now that Trampa is the only one who can sell a ESC called a VESC, all those resources would basically point to them which increases business for Trampa
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All I know is what he’s said so far in these posts. It was one of his earlier posts where he said that BV isn’t enforcing anything yet. Not really interested in doing any more research.
Yes, I agree that it kind of sucks that other people are going to have some hurdles because they’ve been producing “VESC’s”, and now have to change that name to “XXXX based on VESC”. Now that there are expectations, people are understandably upset, but I would hope that BV and Trampa will deal with the transition in a way that has as little negative impact on vendors that are going to have to deal with the name change. More for their sake than anyone else’s. We don’t need any more drama in esk8.
In the end, we all benefitted a lot from the VESC, and without the work of BV, there’d be no VESC.
Not my point. Trampa orchestrated this all behind closed doors, not allowing these quality builders even a seat at the table.
Btw, if you read between the lines, the ‘next generation’ software will cost and be licensed. Just sayin. I don’t think that will necessarily be bad, unless it only works with a Trampa VESC.
Not trying to start conspiracy theories but most all of us here didn’t take up this hobby as a commercial endeavor. We can afford expensive boards. It is the community and open embrace of innovation and the coolness factor.
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I think onloop said it best yesterday, and that’s that we know the lack of morality and what’s happened, but theres not a lot we can do about. It’s best to so degree to just move on, come up with a new name, and run with it. We’ve lost some of it now, but I think theres enough software engineers in this community to work on the software aspect of things that we could write our own firmwares together as a community if need be.
If you don;'t like it, like me, don’t buy from trampa anymore, simple as that…
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Here here. 'Nuff said
You all are basically calling Benjamin an idiot as if he isn’t allowed to make decisions for himself.
If this delays my vesc six™ delivery I’m gonna be pissed.
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It won’t! They are on their way to us. Moved the business today, so we are set up from Tuesday on again. Our old crater, got to small for us. Do you know how hard it is to find a suitable crater these days?
You are right about Benjamin! He’s pretty good at making his decisions himself. It’s not Tramps did…, it’s Ben and Trampa did. You don’t make such decisions without thinking about stuff thoroughly.
Cheers, Frank
That sounds great. Does it mean we Germans can expect the BETA VESC to be delivered before the next weekend? When you are looking on the weather forecast that would be nice. 
We do our best, as always! Next weekend could be to optimistic to be honest.
Frank
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Hey, i want to make clear why i’m no longer offering the vesc repair service. (lp-electronic.com)
I am not okay how trampa and BV began a cooperation behind closed doors. It is simply the way how they did. I’m okay with Ben having a trademark. He has to pay rent and make a living, too. Too many companies just used his design and produced/selled units without him getting anything. (I think this is unethical) It’s just now the community gets fucked because like some ppl here already pointed out: every resource, howto, addons, tips and tweaks point to the term “VESC” which is now “owned” by Trampa. This is not how open source works in my mind. Then i’m wondering why Ben is not releasing any SW Updates in his Github Account? His last statement is “because of security reasons” and that he don’t want to deliver something unfinished to reduce questions. This behaviour is new and only since the coop with Trampa. Before that he regulary released firmwares and everything he had without any doubts even unfinished PCB were available. There was a Bug (max ramp step) in the Firmware. No Problem! Someone found it, pointed out and bam! Fixed. I think (this is my personal opinion) that Trampa wants to get an advance with their VESC and the new Firmware. Other Vendors will get the Software “some time” later when the reference design is finished. It’s okay, it is BV property and his right. I’m not complaining. I am just sad. Other vendors do not get the new FW right now, one side of the medal. On the other hand i believe many open source contributors (like myself) can not add new features to the current firmware. An example: I want to add a Pedelec feature the VESC. I started with this quite some time ago and it is 40% done. I’m not doing anything now on the code because if Ben releases his new version i probably have to redo all my changes. I would like to have the current development branch of his Software in the Github repo. @ frank: Like Mozilla has (you compared vesc to Mozilla in this thread)
I offered the Repair Service to give something back to this community. I do not make a living out of if. (My Dayjob is Software Development). Example: Repair fee is 42€ - 19% Taxes, minus all the other things like tax adviser, rent for my office, electricity, paper, ink, labels, tools and so on. I usually spend between 30 - 80 minutes for a single Vesc. (incl unboxing, diagnosis, repair, packaging back, printing shipping label and creating a invoice).
Lets just find a new name and forget about the term “VESC”. Hopefully at some time the project will be released open source again.
Lucas
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Mate, nothing will go funny! Benjamin wants BETA and will release after that for a very good reason. Its a complete restart of the project, everything is new. 100% new code is quite a job. VESC is an entire environment now, a lot bigger than BLDC-Tool. We are no longer talking about a stand alone software with firmware distributed separately. Everything is a bit more complicated and needs the time! Benjamin has the VESC-server just up and running. Glass fiber cables need to be buried in the garden…
Everyone wants to use the VESC-Brand, Benjamin doesn’t want that. It was his decision, please respect that. Code and HW will be OS, that is a gift. I have the feeling whenever something is for free, people can’t get enough.
Arduino is OS and they have a Trademark and sell original hardware. Super unethical… Get real!
If Benjamin and I wouldn’t have met, you guys would have not seen a fresh VESC-Project restart with 100% new software and hardware. Things change, that’s life.
In the end everyone will love all the new stuff, despite the fact that some Trampa is in it. Some people inspire each other and then things suddenly start to happen, that would not have happened otherwise.
Frank
No doubt…