Get well soon Ben. Now that is blood sweat and tears into the project.
Perhaps you could take some sound advice from someone you know quite well:
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Answers to @mmaner:
1. Trampa tells every US & European manufacturer that they can no longer sell the VESC as a VESC. This does not effect the Chinese Manufacturers, as there is very little enforcement or penalty restrictions regarding US/UK Copyrights and/or Trademarks.
Not true, Benjamin has the TM in China and HK and things changed in China a bit. I pretty sure Jollin from Maytech will do a good job supporting the project, because she is not stupid and can see the benefits of product improvement. It will be no big disadvantage sending over a few bucks per VESC made, especially if you are granted benefits in return (e.g. showing up on list of project supporters). I get quite well along with Chinese folks. Why should they not have the same chance than everyone else to show some respect? Customers have to judge on quality themselves, that is nothing the Project can do for them.
2. Trampa has the sole manufacturing rights & data for the VESC6, but has not released the VESC6 for sale but is still creating a situation where it is difficult, maybe impossible to purchase a VESC4 or 6, in the short term. All of this was done in secret.
Sorry that Benjamin wants to run a BETA before the release. You can buy a VESC 4 at any time and it will still be produced or made in future, Iâm sure. There is a transition phase from HW 4.xx to HW 6.xx and there is nothing you can do about it. Manufacturers have to start making it and get comfortable with the product first. A one day switch from 4 to 6 is not possible, nor good. Companies have stock and need to be able to sell that first. We take our time to make sure everything is up to standard. The software will be released soon. I bet some manufacturers have a VESC 6 hardware design already in their backhand. The hardware is rather easy to make and can be pushed into the market fast. You want everything simultaneously, but Benjamin canât work on everything at the same time. Not enough man power⌠Being seriously injured, I will not put pressure on him and the community should do the same. Manufacturer will profit from the VESC 6 hype. If you sell it a month earlier or later, doesnât matter on the long run. Itâs not a mater of being the first, itâs a matter of having a good and sustainable product in the end.
3. The vendors in this community have ALL donated money to BV, as near s I can tell. Saying the âpeopleâ have not requires some numbers and facts to be a valid argument. The vendors that have not donated the BV are specifically Chinese manufacturers, this action doesnât do anything to hurt them.
You are totally wrong here. I made a list of al VESC manufacturers and vendors and shared the info with Benjamin. He thought it were FOUR manufacturers, not 30 and something. I told you they all fit in a small car. There is no difference between china and the western world! China bashing is not my favourite hobby. If a Chinese factory does a good job, working hard: my respect. I judge by quality and customer support and project support. We will not expose who donated and who not. Let the past be the past and the future be the future. There were some few individuals donating some, not a brought mass of users. Ask Benjamin to confirm that. He will! Current funding situation is far of what the Project deserves.
With regards to âdoing everything secretlyâ: Just wasnât the case if you have a look at Benjaminâs forum and this one. TM stuff is known since it got registered in europe, VESC 6 development is documented on Bens forum and videos on Youtube. Everyone can ask questions at any time and will probably get an answer. Not everything requires a public opinion poll and Benjamin doesnât have to ask the community to make his decisions. He is not a supplicant to the community.
Frank
Ps⌠Sorry when not all questions can be answered instantly. You are many and Benjamin and I are two. Manpower again. You are accusing us to have fucked things up. Your opinion! I have plenty of feedback from people who believe that the steps that were taken were in favour of the project and the community. Iâm not on this planet to make everything being perfect for everyone. Itâs imply not possible since opinions vary. Your point of view is different to Benjamins or @hexakopter or @racidon or @sl33py or @jebe or ⌠. Thatâs the way it is. I would like to convince you that the steps we ( Benjamin and I) have taken were in favour of the Project and will not be an issue for other vendors on the long run. They will still be found on Google, they will build up their own brands, they will have a better soft and hardware to sell. The community will have a access to a way better product in future and hopefully the Project will get more funding to make more things happening. Benjamin and I had endless debates about the decisions that were made. Pros and cons have been debated, chances for vendors have been debated. Consumer issues have been debated etc, etc. Personally I want to see the Project growing on solid foundations. We all can only have only a slice of the cake. A slice of a big cake is still more than a slice of a small cake. So there is probably no interest in cutting off other vendors. VESC-Tool and VESC 6 is OS and a gift. Sorry that some Trampa is in it. I did my part of the job creating the new stuff. Without that the thing would not have happened. Thatâs the way it is, like it or not.
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Me either, but I think you will see in the future that this was a terrible move for the powered skateboard community.
So there is no protection being offered by Tampaâs involvement, only stopping others from selling, glad you agree. 90% of the people building boards already know that the chinese VESCâs for the most part are junk, so nothing achieved there either.
He secretly invested (said bought) his money at the expense of other builders, that is not good business. How do you know the VESC 6 is gonna be so great. Until he actually starts shipping thereâs no possible way you could know. You might âthinkâ it will be but is that good enough to stop other sellers from selling? I donât think so, I think its shitty behaviour.
I completely disagree. He snuck in and negotiated a deal that has screwed everyone but him and MAYBE Ben. If you ok with that kind of behaviour then fine, I am not and this is why. This ainât a game of monopoly, there are consequences to starting this kind of action. You will now see other vendors and developers be less likely to release anything new for fear that someone like Frank will snap it up and make it there own. If nothing else, Frank has eroded the trust this community had in the vendors and manufacturers.
Iâm just gonna put it out there. If you know of a vendor who is part of this community and/or in the US/UK that has not donated to BV then call them out. I donât think you can. I think everyone of the VESC manufacturers that DID NOT donate the BV are either chinese or one-offs. So, once again no protection offered by this action.
People that think you can do ANYTHING in the name of business are the problem. You should really really think about that. Capitalism is a great thing, its freekin awesome. It allows people with a desire and a talent and a willingness to work hard to make something new and profitable. I grew up in a small business and owned my own company for a lot of years (sold it to spend more time with my family). But it is not a valid excuse for treating people like shit.
All ephemera until it actually happens.which it still hasnât.
o impact! Are you serious? If you have 200 VESC PCBâs on the shelf waiting to sellâŚwell now you have 200 paper weights because noone with any pride is gonna use a sharpie on them and sell them. If it were me Id just keep selling them as is until they are gone. If Frank doesnât like it he can file for a cease and desist. I feel no need to treat people respectfully that havenât shown me the same courtesy and Frank has disrespected this entire community.
Yes it will, in the meantime availability will continue to go down until its difficult to find a VESC, many vendors will have lost a lot of money, all in the name of Frank lining his pockets. I just donât see how you can be OK with that. He has literally told every other vendor they cant sell anymore but he is not even selling them yet. Its stupid.
I do, I just donât think you are seeing the big picture here. But its all good. This is my last reply on this topic, Iâm tired of it. Those that have a willingness to think deeper than the next purchase will have seen the login here, those that wont or cant will eventually see it too. Good luck.
Dude, you might wanna try and look at some of the corollaries instead of just trying to stir up shit.
I had this long post about how moist of this was still rhetoric and opinion if not outright lies, but Iâm done. Do what your gonna do. I will remember as will most people.
You are so full of wild accusations mate! Unless you donât come up with an idea how things should have been handled and how VESC SIX or VESC-Tool could have been made possible without invest from the hardly existing funding, without someone taking care of the pile of undone work, your accusation are hollow at best. You have no clue how much work it was, nor how much invest it took, but you will like the new stuff for sure! VESC-Tool is a 100% restart of the Project, 100% new code! Its a fucking amazing piece of software that will bring a lot of boost into the market and under your feet. Itâs OS and magnitudes better than anything else out there. Put your negative attitude to the side and help to make it even better. Because now its up to the community and vendors to build upon the new release. Forgive Benjamin if he will do stuff slower than usual, due to the very bad accident he had on Saturday. This will cause some delays no one wanted to happen.
Frank
Iâve never made wild accusations. Ive asked what this does for the community and why you are uniquely suited to resolve the issues. You have still, after 30 posts, not answered the questions. You throw around rhetoric and Ben this and Ben that and dodge the questions. Its comical at this point.
As far as accusations, I have accused you of being greedy and not supporting the community. I prove these accusations bu the very fact you are using legal means to stop other sellers from selling stock they have on the shelves and that you took this action in secret. Nothing wild about it, pretty damned straight forward.
Your right, none of use do because you have been secretive about this entire process. You surprised everyone by taking away the right of others to sell using the VESC name, so they either have to trash the existing stock or use a Sharpie to mark it out (which is never gonna happen and is ridiculous to suggest).
One again, a ridiculous statement. How in the world can you know what I will like and not like? You donât, your just trying to sell us a bag of promises.
I honestly donât care who makes/sells VESCâs anymore. I am angry that you are trying to force others to change their business model to and costing them thousands of dollars for no other reason than your profit. If you had sent a legit letter to all of the vendors and said⌠âIn 90 days the VESC name will be off-limits ad you need to come up with your own name because we bought itâ⌠I could have respected that, but you didnât. You pit all this together and then sprung it on everyone. I think its sleazy and greedy.
I donât have anything against Ben, I think he made a bad decision by using someone like you who has no respect for the community and is only interested in profitâŚbut legally that is his choice.
If you want to make this right, you should contact the VESC vendors in the UK and US that HAVE donated to Ben and tell them they have 90 or 120 days before you will enforce the trademark. That would allow them to sell there existing stock and do a lot of good for the community by not potentially putting vendors out of business and keeping the price down and availability up. Is that something you would be willing to do?
you can have one in about 3 weeks if you download the gerber files and upload them to marofab. Price starts dropping at 10 units.
you can also buy them from AXLE. And Ollin. And DIY. And Miami. And even maytech if you donât care about anything over 10S. They simply wonât be called VESC. Theyâll be called FOCBOX and OllinESC and Dexterâs Magical Fun Box and Miami Heat or something who knows. Maytech will probably just call them VESCs and give everyone the finger unless we talk them out f it, (Jollin will listen if you speak her dialect of business) but who cares.
I donât understand. If you think people like me arenât already doodling logos to have laser etched in thier new v6 the second those reference designs hit the market youâre nuts. Hell even direct FET 4.12s in that form factor are worth the effort, as the X clearly demonstrated.
Lets try not to skew facts in favor of argument and just stick to the simple concept of not liking all the closed doors and corporate optics from Trampaâs direction.
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I didnât come up with this storm here. TM is known since Jan 17. Statement is out since May17, just before BETA starts. This storm just over rolled the official statement. Next week the vendors will get a longer e-mail from Benjamin.
http://vedder.se/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=733
Renaming the thing on a website is no big deal and selling some existing stock is no big deal. If you want to conform fully, you black out the tiny VESC-Logo, job done. Doesnât cost you thousands. Costs you an hour of time and a marker pen. Next batch new logo. Doesnât put anyone out of business!
Frank
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This forum is getting worse than the Boosted Reddit, in reality there is much better now, itâs sad to watch
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You ask to call them out, so I call out @onloop. I think he is the one that sold the most VESCs and didnât donate Benjamin any money. As he says himself he is âdonating to the communityâ.
Just read the following comments on this thread I am anti-innovation & here is why - #47 by chaka - Meta - Electric Skateboard Builders Forum | Learn How to Build your own E-board. When you read between the lines, Jason admit that he didnât donate to Benjamin. So I can totally understand Benjamins decision.
As @Pedrodemio said this thread/forum is escalating a little bit to much about the TM thing maybe you should read your words again, so that this discussion can calm down a little.[quote=âmmaner, post:349, topic:23017â] This is my last reply on this topic [/quote] Wait one week when the BETAs got their VESC6âs and can tell you if @trampa has âdestroyedâ the VESC project (as you would say) or if they have contributed (as I would say) to an awesome product.
Iâm not scewing facts, I have talked to vendors that are upset that they may have issues selling PCBâs on the shelf that say VESC. If that wasnât an issue I wouldnât be upset, I would just think that Frank was greedy.
Vendors are in the situation where they cannot say what they think in public about Frank because is could effect there ability to get product. I am not in that situation, so I decided to speak out.
That is your interpretation, not a fact. This action was taken over the statement that vendors were not donating to Ben. Just because Jason said he had issues with the VESC and/or Ben (and I am not saying he did, you said that) doesnt correlate to a lack of donations. Iâm glad your not on a juryâŚ
Are you gonna sell something with sharpie all over it? Thatâs just stupid, quality manufacturers do not send out product that looks like that. That is not a good solution, I have you a good solution and you wont even comment on it. Just proving my point again.
I let it go, yaâll kept arguing. Take some responsibility.
of course theyâre going to have issues. They canât call them VESCs and theyâve already stocked up a bunch of PCBs with VESC screen printed on them. Iâd be mad too. Boo hoo. Like that time i bought a bunch of BMSs i couldnât fucking use and China wouldnât take them back.
And i think the position theyâre in as far as feeling as if they canât talk shit about Frank is due to their general confusion of the issues while trying to stay diplomatic. They obviously arenât aware of the fact that what they have is a license to print money and all they have to do is come up with a logo that doesnât say VESC.
Hell iâm a vendor and iâm on here talking shit. IF they feel they canât, theyâre pussies.
Hereâs what I think is going to happen. Those people are going to have to make a VESC variant that actually holds up for more than a fucking week because they no longer have the VESC name to lean on. No more VESC IS A VESC IS A VESC so lets buy the cheapest one from aliexpress and bitch about how its crap and burned up in a month after a couple hill climbs. Now theyâre buying Tommy Two Toesâ Coil Commander that fell off a truck and has a deep discount and bitching about that one failing instead. Whammo, one less bad review on a VESC that was barely even a VESC and one less hit on Benjamin.
Trampa will have the ability to use the VESC name and is using that to charge a massive premium for a massively premium product. That premium will be used to pay themselves back for the cost of doing everything they did. But thatâs not going to encourage all the people to buy Trampa VESCs and eliminate the entire market and cause a drought. Thatâs going to encourage people with more money than time to research to buy Trampa VESCs out of an overwhelming sense of caution about not buying parts twice, a sense of caution they probably developed here while we beat that very thing into their head over the course of the past couple of years. The rest of the people are going to buy from the same damned vendors they always have, except now thereâs a different sticker on it. And theyâre going to keep bitching when they fail.
Its almost as if⌠wait for it⌠nothing has changed.
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Can we agree that specific action was kind of shitty and call it a day?
LOL, I feel ya.
I am digging that actually, I like the idea of different variants. My issue was that Frank said this wall all for Ben and good for the community. Im calling bullshit on that, straight up lie.
Unless this market is unlike every other market ever, I think you are going to see that isnât true in the long run.
Look at the cost of insurance in the states, doubled over 5 years because the government wanted to make healthcare accessible to everyone. Most of the people that didnât have it 5 years ago still donât have it but I pay twice as much for mine. The benefit? All for the insurance companies.
Look at Comcast & AT&T. They provide shitty customer server, even shittier actual service. The bump the prices, change the name, call it a day and go to sleep on big fat piles of cash.
I think this will have very little benefit to the community, Frank has demonstrated where his priorities are. I donât think Ben is gonna get a huge windfall of cash from donations, thereâs going to me too much animosity over this crap. I do think that availability is going to touchy for awhile. None of this had to happen, it could have been so much more elegant and good for almost everybody.
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Availability of quality VESCs wonât be an issue once the manufacturers get done bagging the old PCBs for trash day.
I also predict MayTech will be contacting god and everybody about OEMed VESC 4.12s as well as VESC 6s. If they donât theyâre fools. Iâll take mine in red, thank you.
That specific action was shitty. Day called. 
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