PavlovsCat's restart of the Cory/Sarah/Mario/Daniel drama

I think you are conflating another company with ISW. To my knowledge there was never a situation where Mario compared one of our products to a Tonehammer product. I believe there was a time when he compared Reqiuem to Voxos (not our product), on KVRAudio, and compared the two without trashing either one. (He's shared screenshots to that effect.)

Andrew Aversa said:

I think you are conflating another company with ISW. To my knowledge there was never a situation where Mario compared one of our products to a Tonehammer product. I believe there was a time when he compared Reqiuem to Voxos (not our product), on KVRAudio, and compared the two without trashing either one. (He's shared screenshots to that effect.)

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Sorry, @Andrew Aversa . I revised the reference. It was Sonokinetic. Hey, it was 15 years ago, long before there even was an 8Dio! But I was the "expert" called in by a mutual developer friend to give Mario advice back then (even though I'm a marketing pro and not a lawyer). I suppose I got confused because I recall someone had mentioned that they thought it was a conflict of interest for 2 Impact Soundworks contractors -- who are 8Dio competitors -- to participate in an attack on a competitor and never disclosed that affiliation? Then you posted in the 8Dio attack thread, and that didn't seem to meet the basic standards of professionalism or ethics. Andrew, I own some of your libraries and have recommended your Rhapsody Orchestral library numerous times at the Cakewalk forum. I also defended you when your 80% discount code was being shared at another forum and the crowd was hostile to you. I was the 1 voice speaking up in the matter in your defense because I thought it was the right thing to do. But after witnessing you and your contractors savagely bash a competitor in a completely bullying fashion and you join in that toxic thread, and not even identify that you were a competitor, I found it profoundly unethical and a cooperative attack against a competitor. FTR, I go back a long way as a business writer with my writing on ethics recommended by the head of Wharton's ethics department for all Wharton students to read and that came out of my being a business executive with a passion for ethics, which means that I especially have a problem with poor ethics. When your contractors bashed a competitor and you didn't identify or have them identify as competitors nor did you yourself do anything but join in the attack, I found it indefensible and have actually come to your defense at the Cakewalk forum when you were lecturing the group on ethics earlier this year. But your contractors' refusal to disclose their conflict of interest then your own choice not to do so, was disappointing and I'm one of your customers. who had been recommended some of your libraries, your Rhapsody library, over at the Cakewalk forum.

[Mario / Evil Dragon and I have written a couple of dozen PMs and since he's not responding here, it seems rather obvious that Mike Greene has told him not to. I'm going to respond to Mario here and I'm not going to post what he wrote to me. But it's super friendly and respectful. And I'm still very fond of Mario. ]

@EvilDragon can you clarify? I thought that Troels response to you in the Sarah thread was a sincere apology. You had even posted a screenshot of your private communications with Troels without his consent, which is illegal in California where VI Control is located, and Troels didn't even bring it up because he was focused on empathizing with you. Troels brought up that you didn't disclose that you were working for Impact Soundworks and I can see there appears to be some bad blood between Impact Soundworks towards 8Dio in numerous instances, it keeps reappearing, but I don't know the history. To my understanding, both Sarah and you have worked for 8Dio's competitor IS and the company's CEO , Andrew Aversa, participated in the attack thread, but never disclosed that conflict of interest.

What kind of apology are you looking for? Can you re-read Troels apology. and let me know what you think is missing that you would like to see. I will see if I can do anything to make it happen. I know that Troels and Tawnia care about you. I've personally told Tawnia that I think you're a really nice person that I've known -- not well but known through the forum and a mutual friend -- for nearly 20 years and I know that my vouching for your character meant something, and she told me that she and Troels would welcome the opportunity to make things right but there also needs to be mutual accountability -- I think that is extremely reasonable and want to hear from you if that is something you are open to and if not, what was the point of a 40+ page thread bullying Troels, Tawnia and 8Dio and even some poor guy who defended 8Dio who didn't get his post deleted like the rest of us. Tha thread was just the most awful, toxic, libelous, meanspirited, angry mob disaster movie I've seen at this forum in at least a month. And I bet Mike will find another developer to do that to next month and leverage other people like you and Cory to exploit for his own vendettas. Okay, this is my coda. But I don't think getting revenge on a developer because the guy over-reacted to something 15 years ago is healthy. I was called in to give you advice how to deal with the situation back then, and I told you the reality was, Troels was clearly just upset with what you did or he thought you did-- because I wasn't there I don't know and I'm just getting your side not much of Troels -- and Troels acknowledges that he probably did overreact and he gave what looks a heck of a lot like a sincere, heartfelt apology, and he didn't even bring up your illegally sharing his private message to you, which would upset a lot of people to a great degree.

"EvilDragon:

I know we had a dispute with Sonokinetic back in 2011, since they were copy/pasting our Tonehammer FAQ letter by letter and that pissed us off. But these were early days and while legally we had every right to stop someone from using our copyrighted material, in hindsight I acknowledge I was probably more aggressive than I could have been, and all developers make mistakes. EvilDragon was making negative comments about our Requiem Choir back in 2011 and since he was working for Sonokinetic we had issues with that

Generally speaking, I have no issues with people posting negative impressions of our products, but it is a different discussion when they are associated with competitive products and developers, as then there is a concern whether it is a legitimate review or colored by the competing interests of the reviewer, which is not fair to us, especially when that competing interest is not disclosed.

Sonokinetic made it clear that EvilDragon was only a freelancer and they had no control over what he said. I don’t recall any other conversations with EvilDragon, but that is not to say we didn’t have any. I just don’t remember it, sorry.

EvilDragon is also associated to Impact Soundworks and/or has worked for them in the past."


@Mike Greene as you permitted Mario to publish private communications with Troels on your forum without Troels' consent, which is illegal in your and Troels' state and most of the US., would you be willing to provide 8Dio with consent to publish their private correspondence with you? I'm asking that literally, as I know they feel it is incredibly compelling with regard to the allegations you continue to repeat against them and that you have represented information and the character of at least one of the people you're defending in a manner that cannot be reconciled with your representation of those individuals in your private correspondence to them. There are also key facts that you acknowledge in those communications that are the opposite of what you have been publicly stating. I'll provide one specific example. A key person that you have publicly championed as someone wronged by 8Dio, you've privately represented as someone lacking integrity and even went as far as to compare that person's demands to extortion and proposed that 8Dio pay a significant sum of money in exchange for that person to stop making defamatory posts about them -- which you acknowledged that you do not find credible, but the forum members now believe that person -- and you proposed that if 8Dio pay a significant sum of money to that person in exchange for that person ceasing to make further defamatory statements about 8Dio. Mike, can you please provide your consent so we can all find out if this very troubling allegation is true? I can promise you that I'll get the screenshots within minutes of your consent to 8Dio to publish your private conversation regarding this.

PMs sent to Mike Green and Mario / Evil Dragon to see if I can set up Zoom meetings between w/ 8Dio and get people talking and finding common ground. I think it would be good for everyone, including the developer community and everyone who uses this forum.

[EDIT: Mike has declined the offer. Mario has declined my offer. .]

PavlovsCat said:

And right now, I am sincerely worried about Cory. I haven't heard from him in a long time and I think every time you bring up his story, and you're telling it in a way that really isn't accurate, it is making things worse for him.

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Sorry to hear that, but is it impossible for Cory to explain and clear things out? I don't see how it is helpful to use advodacies here, it's already blurred enough.

PavlovsCat said:

A key person that you have publicly championed as someone wronged by 8Dio, you've privately represented as someone lacking integrity and even went as far as to compare that person's demands to extortion...

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I wasn't going to respond to this, but this is such a gross misrepresentation of what I wrote, as well as a slam against Sarah and Mario, that I'm posting the entirety of the email I wrote to Troels and Tawnia. (With one paragraph redacted, where I said I was not interested in discussing the private health information that Tawnia said one of the participants had confided to her.)

For perspective, note that this email was written to help Troels and Tawnia better handle the situation. If nothing else, I hope this email (which took hours to write) makes clear that I was making an honest attempt at that, and was hoping for a happy resolution.

Note also that neither Troels nor Tawnia respond well to criticism, so I purposefully avoided trying to convince them Sarah, Cory, Daniel or Mario were right. Instead, I adopted a tone of "Here's the situation you're in, whether it's right or wrong, and here's how to get out of it."

My use of the word extortion was because I like to write colorfully. It's a writing device, and by no means am I actually saying Sarah was extorting them. On the contrary, from everything I've read from Adachi users, her work is more than worth the $10k I suggested they offer her. And more importantly, she's also made it very clear she is *not* demanding to be paid.

Anyway, FWIW I still stand by every word of this email:

Hey guys,

Thanks for the info, but I’m not sure of the actual context, since I don’t think these conversations are where the episode started. The first message you’ve sent me (which shows where you PM’d him on VI-C) is dated May 28th. But then Cory is responding that same day with friendly offers to do reviews. So it seems unlikely his YouTube video was done on the same day, presumably between the time of these messages. Rather, I’m guessing there were some communications to Cory before this text string that you’re not showing me.

Regarding Cory being employed by SoundIron, I get the impression he merely did music demos for them. If he was actually employed by SoundIron, and posting negatively about 8dio, then that’s an issue you need to take up with Mike Peaslee, not me.

Whether <redacted> I’m not interested in getting into that, either.

What I do care about is the forum, and if there are reports that people are being intimidated by 8dio, then that becomes my problem. Based on 8dio history (I’ll get to that in a minute), I suspect Cory’s description in his YouTube video is accurate, although I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of debating that. Whether Cory’s story is true or not, we’re still left with Mario’s story, which seems pretty undeniable to me. To threaten Mario, and then by extension, Sonokinetic, is not cool, and that’s a really bad look for you guys.

I suspect there are others, because based on conversations at NAMM, I keep hearing stories about Amanda sending letters to developers. None recent (that I know of), but that history and MO are there, so it’s hard to not believe Cory and Mario.

I had assumed that when you finally posted yesterday, it would be more of an apology, rather than casting yourselves as victims. People love apologies. Big companies playing victims … not so much.

If you’ll indulge me for a minute, I think you’re playing this from the wrong angle. Hear me out on this, because I mean this honestly: I assume you guys make at least a million a year. After all, li'l ole Realitone makes <redacted>, so you guys must be way over that. So if it were me, when Sarah approached me about getting paid for the Adachi thing, I would have paid her. $10k, $20k, whatever. (Although I’d probably balk at anything higher than 20k.) In the grand scheme of things, it’s chump change.

In a pure dollars and cents scenario, it might not add up, where additional sales might not offset the Sarah payment. I get it. But in your case (and mine), we’re companies that have images to protect, so big picture, I‘d think to myself that I already spend that same amount in two months of ad budget. Don't get me wrong, I hate spending $10k as much as the next guy, but from a PR perspective, sometimes you gots to pay what you gots to pay.

Granted, it may seem a little like extortion, but in the power dynamic of public perception, she, as “the little guy” will always have the advantage over the big corporation, so she had you over a barrel. As my lawyer often tells me, “I know it isn’t fair, but trust me, just pay them.”

Similarly, you’re never, ever going to win an integrity battle with Mario. He’s got you, and can’t lose in this debate. So the only play you have is to apologize. That’s the only play I see. So if it were me, I’d write something like, “Yes, Mario is absolutely right. What he wrote is true, and I’m embarrassed by that. I was admittedly paranoid, overly paranoid, and I let my emotions and temper get the best of me. I apologize for that. Sincerely. That’s not who I want to be and I want to be a better person.” That may or may not work, because yesterday's posts reeeeally hurt your cause, and this would be a complete 180 from what you already said. But honestly, I think it’s the only play you have.

There’s still the Cory issue to deal with, but I don’t know the full story on that, so I’m not sure how to proceed. Subsequent YouTube posts from Cory have indicated he’s actually *not* okay with how everything turned out, so I would avoid trying to say things are all good now. Nobody will believe you.

If it were me, I’d also contact Sarah now and offer her $10k. No additional work, no strings attached. (Do NOT suggest deleting negative posts on the forum.) Just pay her for what she’s already done, with an apology, plus a thank you for her efforts, and even a thank you that her work did indeed sell extra copies of Anthology. (Whether it’s true or not. We’re in the happy customers business, not the truth business.) Make her feel good, which is the main thing she (or anyone) really wants. Don’t post on the forum that you did this! Give her time to process … forgive … then at some point, I’ll bet she posts, and you'll look like a star.

That’s just me, though. I’m a pragmatist and accept that certain things are just costs of doing business.

With all that said, my concern, if you don’t mind me being blunt, is that I think you both have a tendency towards taking things personally, and lashing out over perceived wrongs. The threats to other developers, the threats to Mario and Cory, the falling out with Mike Peaslee (to his credit, he has never spoken ill of you), the angry nephew (Victor?), the dealings with the Prague PRO guys, even some of the dealings with me. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t know anyone who’s made as many enemies as you guys have, and seeing this as an outsider, they speak to a pattern of vengeance, rather than love and light.

So maybe you’re still feeling that it’s you who’s been wronged in all this. I would do whatever it takes to let that go. I’m not saying you need to go all-in on the suggestions I made, but at minimum, I wholeheartedly recommend NOT playing the victim.

I hope you take all this in the spirit intended.

Mike

(In case there's any ambiguity, since this has come back up again, I absolutely do not want money from 8Dio. They were well within their rights to not license Adachi from me and to do their own Adagio overhaul as Adastra Strings instead. My complaints were primarily related to Troels' rewriting of history in that thread, and were a minuscule issue in comparison to the 8Dio Experiences that other people then came forward with in the same thread.)

Thanks for posting, Mike. I have like 30 different docs, but I won't embark on this any further. It is pointless, this is 8Dio's battle note mine. I was feeling terrible for what you did to them in this forum and still do, but I've spent way too much time on it because I've felt bad for these people and what they went through. Even if they're as terrible as you've made them out to be, I still don't belive they're deserving of what you did to them and I think it just makes this forum incredibly toxic. But yes, it's clear, while there are a lot of wonderful people here. I'm not a very good fit. So addressing the letter and why I am confident that any attorney will find it problematic. And after spending decades working with attorneys who review every word and comma, this would never go out if a lawyer looked at first. And if you found a lawyer that okayed this, I'd recommend firing that lawyer.

But also, you never once assert anything that claims Sarah has any merit as a KONTAKT scirpter, every argument is premised on the potential harm she can do if you don't give her $10k. The argument is never made about value and decades of working with attorneys every day reviewing every letter, every ad, every press release, any copy, there is no attorney I've ever worked with that would NOT see this and have a very strong reaction, because frankly. the only rationale you provide for paying Sarah $10k is the serious harm she will otherwise do to the business. You start your letter by addressing how accusations against 8Dio are causing harm. The first several sentences of the letter are all addressing reputational damage. Your first case for Sarah is not about respecting her abilities, it's about protecting the business from the harm it does if you don't pay her, you get right into "protecting images" and doing this from a PR perspective, it's never based on your public argument, the value of Sarah's work and abilities:

In a pure dollars and cents scenario, it might not add up, where additional sales might not offset the Sarah payment. I get it. But in your case (and mine), we’re companies that have images to protect, so big picture, I‘d think to myself that I already spend that same amount in two months of ad budget. Don't get me wrong, I hate spending $10k as much as the next guy, but from a PR perspective, sometimes you gots to pay what you gots to pay.

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And the fact is, that you've used VI Control as the promotion and amplification system for extremely damaging messages against 8Dio that you have personally spread and you have given Sarah a platform to spread and now you're advocating paying Sarah will mitigate. Again, this all looks like extortion -- pay up or the damage will continue and then you add how unfair this is, do you think this is portraying Sarah as a true professional;? If you wrote this about me I would be sickened. Although I'm sure your justification was that ends justify the means, so using an approach that literally is extortion :

Granted, it may seem a little like extortion, but in the power dynamic of public perception, she, as “the little guy” will always have the advantage over the big corporation, so she had you over a barrel. As my lawyer often tells me, “I know it isn’t fair, but trust me, just pay them.”

PavlovsCat said:

...I won't embark on this any further. It is pointless, this is 8Dio's battle note mine.

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Good advice.
Your 'under the microscope' look at something Mike casually said in an email feels irrelevant to the actual issues at hand, coming across as either an attempt at misdirection, or simply clutching at straws.
You play a good game at being 'neutral' and 'sticking to the facts', then make seemingly baseless statements that Mike has "clearly" instructed Mario to stay silent?
It's invalidating the several credentials you keep trying to assign to yourself, and your overall "just trying to help" defense.

Sarah Mancuso said:

(In case there's any ambiguity, since this has come back up again, I absolutely do not want money from 8Dio. They were well within their rights to not license Adachi from me and to do their own Adagio overhaul as Adastra Strings instead. My complaints were primarily related to Troels' rewriting of history in that thread, and were a minuscule issue in comparison to the 8Dio Experiences that other people then came forward with in the same thread.)

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if you truly were dealt a bad deal, I never really understood that. And if you felt it worth it to do one quick post to tell the story quickly, I'd be grateful, but I completely get if you don't want to. I am interested in hearing your side without the toxic, bitter attacks that were occurring in the other thread. And I really don't know Troels or Tawnia well and I'm trying to understand what's the truth and for those trying navigate truth, that past thread was not somewhere I would depend on. I do want you to know that Troels did tell me that he thought you were very talented. No qualifications around that. Now I read your posts in that thread, and you felt very angry against Troels and Tanya and I never understood why specifically, what caused that.

Correct me where you feel the info is not right:

I was told that a contractor, not Troels himself, a composer, had met with you. Troels had told me that you wanted 6 figures for your fan script project for a retired library. Troels told me that it was really high-quality work, but it was for a retired library and there's now way they'd be able to make the money. It was described you were very disappointed by this. (Which FTR, I don't think anyone could blame you for that; by all accounts you do superb work and as I once shot you a PM, I've head your music and think you're a very talented musician, I really liked it.)

I believe Troels then said they talked to you about two upcoming projects, because Troels said that he definitely wanted to use you. But you felt their offer was far too low.

Is there anything more that was done to you that you feel was unfair? And could you share what that was? Because it seemed to me -- and granted, I only learned about from Troels -- that you did this fan project and people here loved it, which is obvious from the initial reaction of the thread before you modified it.

So, what was the event that triggered you to change the thread from praising 8Dio libraries to saying, they're really bad, don't by them and making the thread about Cory, Mario.... I get that you felt wronged, but exactly how do you feel they wronged, because I never understood that. I thnk Mario once told me that you felt they led you on. And if so, what did that look like, how did they lead you on?

I don't mean to repeat the other thread, but that wasn't a thread of people being clear headed, it was anger and rage. Right now, we seem capable of talking about in a more calm manner.

Jdiggity1 said:

You play a good game at being 'neutral' and 'sticking to the facts', then make seemingly baseless statements that Mike has "clearly" instructed Mario to stay silent?

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For the record, Mario and I haven't communicated AT ALL about any of this.

PavlovsCat said:

If you truly were dealt a bad deal, I never really understood that. And if you felt it worth it to do one quick post to tell the story quickly, I'd be grateful, but I completely get if you don't want to. I am interested in hearing your side without the toxic, bitter attacks that were occurring in the other thread. And I really don't know Troels or Tawnia well. I do want you to know that Troels did tell me that he thought you were very talented. No qualifications around that. Now I read your posts in that thread, and you felt very angry against Troels and Tanya and I never understood why specifically, what caused that.

Correct me where you feel the info is not right:

I was told that a contractor, not Troels himself, a composer, had met with you. Troels had told me that you wanted 6 figures for your fan script project for a retired library. Troels told me that it was really high-quality work, but it was for a retired library and there's now way they'd be able to make the money. It was described you were very disappointed by this. (Which FTR, I don't think anyone could blame you for that; by all accounts you do superb work and as I once shot you a PM, I've head your music and think you're a very talented musician, I really liked it.)

I believe Troels then said they talked to you about two upcoming projects, because Troels said that he definitely wanted to use you. But you felt their offer was far too low.

Is there anything more that was done to you that you feel was unfair? And could you share what that was? Because it seemed to me -- and granted, I only learned about from Troels -- that you did this fan project and people here loved it, which is obvious from the initial reaction of the thread before you modified it.

So, what was the event that triggered you to change the thread from praising 8Dio libraries to saying, they're really bad, don't by them and making the thread about Cory, Mario.... I get that you felt wronged, but exactly how do you feel they wronged, because I never understood that. I thnk Mario once told me that you felt they led you on. And if so, what did that look like, how did they lead you on?

I don't mean to repeat the other thread, but that wasn't a thread of people being clear headed, it was anger and rage. Right now, we seem capable of talking about in a more calm manner.

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I had a lengthy video call with Troels (I'm not sure where this came from about me "meeting with a contractor"?), and when later asked for a price, I definitely did not ask for 6 figures for anything. I believe the amount I asked for to turn Adachi into a fully fleshed out and commercially releasable Adagio successor was $12k, to completely re-edit and reprogram a massive library over a period of several more months (also accounting for a portion of the unpaid time that had been spent on it already). At the time I was just throwing out a number based on advice from people I knew in the industry, and from what I now know, I would consider that a fairly lowballed amount for the time that was actually put into the project. But, of course, this wasn't something 8Dio signed up for, and they were well within their rights to say no. (Though I do wish they had made their decision several months sooner, rather than stringing me along about it while telling me how excited they were about the work I was doing!)

Their conclusion was that they didn't want to pay that much and would rather do it themselves, which is completely fair. The recently released Adastra Strings is the result of that work, and seems to have taken things in a much different direction than what I was working on.

The thread about Adachi was posted a while after that deal had already fallen through, at which point I still felt pretty amicable about things. If I was angry at 8Dio for not licensing my work, I wouldn't have posted the thread in the first place. "Hey, I hate these guys, anyway here's a reason to buy Anthology from them!" wouldn't make a lot of sense. I already had received offers to work for a few different sample developers because word had gotten around (I actually held off joining ISW for half a year because I felt an attachment to this project and was holding out hope that it could be seen to completion officially), so there was no real benefit to posting the thread, other than my thinking that it would be a waste to keep it just sitting on my hard drive.

After a while, I started to get annoyed with how Troels' posts in the thread misrepresented the situation to make himself look generous for allowing me to distribute my own code. Then after he decided to twist what really happened to make me sound greedy and unreasonable, I explained what actually happened, and that was when things really got set off. It was then that people started chiming in with their experiences of being legally threatened by Troels and Tawnia. My attitude in the thread shifted even more after that point because after learning those ugly truths, I regretted having ever publicly supported that company.

Mike Greene said:

For the record, Mario and I haven't communicated AT ALL about any of this.

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Exact same thing I told PavlovsCat in DM.

Sarah Mancuso said:

I definitely did not ask for 6 figures for anything. I believe the amount I asked for to turn Adachi into a fully fleshed out and commercially releasable Adagio successor was $12k, to completely re-edit and reprogram a massive library over a period of several more months (also accounting for a portion of the unpaid time that had been spent on it already). At the time I was just throwing out a number based on advice from people I knew in the industry, and from what I now know, I would consider that a fairly lowballed amount for the time that was actually put into the project. But, of course, this wasn't something 8Dio signed up for, and they were well within their rights to say no. (Though I do wish they had made their decision several months sooner, rather than stringing me along about it while telling me how excited they were about the work I was doing!)

Their conclusion was that they didn't want to pay that much and would rather do it themselves, which is completely fair. The recently released Adastra Strings is the result of that work, and seems to have taken things in a much different direction than what I was working on.

The thread about Adachi was posted a while after that deal had already fallen through, at which point I still felt pretty amicable about things. If I was angry at 8Dio for not licensing my work, I wouldn't have posted the thread in the first place. "Hey, I hate these guys, anyway here's a reason to buy Anthology from them!" wouldn't make a lot of sense. I already had received offers to work for a few different sample developers because word had gotten around (I actually held off joining ISW for half a year because I felt an attachment to this project and was holding out hope that it could be seen to completion officially), so there was no real benefit to posting the thread, other than my thinking that it would be a waste to keep it just sitting on my hard drive.

After a while, I started to get annoyed with how Troels' posts in the thread misrepresented the situation to make himself look generous for allowing me to distribute my own code. Then after he decided to twist what really happened to make me sound greedy and unreasonable, I explained what actually happened, and that was when things really got set off. It was then that people started chiming in with their experiences of being legally threatened by Troels and Tawnia. My attitude in the thread shifted even more after that point because after learning those ugly truths, I regretted having ever publicly supported that company.

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Thank you for taking the time to explain that. I understand you incredibly better and will never again say the 6 figure remark. I was just going by what I was told, but I hope you can believe me when I say that I don't want to get your story wrong. I'm really just trying to navigate what I'm being told and I appreciate your patience and that really nice PM. See there is hope for mankind! Your PM made my day.

EvilDragon said:

Exact same thing I told PavlovsCat in DM.

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Sorry for my cynicism, @EvilDragon and @Mike Greene , sometimes I get things wrong. I think I did get some things wrong and I apologize to both of you for that and appreciate your patience as I'm trying to navigate things. To the guy ripping on me for flaws, have at it. There's no one more aware of their flaws. I put my heart into things I'm more into sincerity not perfection.

Well, if you’re feeling introspective, how about this: I'm wondering why, as you read my email, you found plenty to nitpick with what I wrote and even determined no lawyer would have ever allowed that, but ... the part about Tawnia telling me private health information of someone else that was shared to her “in confidence” (her words) ... that didn't raise an eyebrow?

What thread can I go to and just discuss 8Dio samples without having to weed through numerous posts about how good / evil 8Dio people are?

I thought this was that thread - way down in the VI-C basement. Apparently not.

doctoremmet said:

What thread can I go to and just discuss 8Dio samples without having to weed through numerous posts about how good / evil 8Dio people are?

I thought this was that thread - way down in the VI-C basement. Apparently not.

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That would be nice. There's some backstory to this, though.

Tawnia started a discussion a few days ago on the private developers group on Facebook. (A group I do not control, it should be noted.) Basically it's an attempt to rally the other developers in revolt against that unfair tyrant that runs VI-Control. Mike Greene this, Mike Greene that ... you know the drill. She didn't get any supporters, although in classic Tawnia Knox fashion, she did piss off some people along the way, making accusations of "virtue signaling" and calling one guy "Beyonce," which I still don't understand. It's a crazy (but entertaining!) discussion.

Anyway, in one of her posts yesterday, where she complained that no one was rallying with her, she said at least she made a "wonderful new friend" named Peter. Peter (PavlovsCat) has told me that they are indeed communicating, so I guess Peter's initial post here is part of their plan to shame me into submission. A dumb plan IMO, and believe me, I have things I'd rather be doing than this. But what can we do?

Can the regular users of this thread take a vote on being okay with the moderators moving any more comments that come up relating to this subject immediately to the drama zone with the comment "yes we voted on this!"? I think Mike has been more than fair to keep this thread here for 8Dio discussion after the way he has been treated by them.

I'd say just delete the comments but that might make things worse? Though I am OK with that also. I have to say that using sock puppets to bring up old disagreements doesn't really improve my opinion of them. Much smarter to let it die. People not involved do forget.

Mike Greene said:

That would be nice. There's some backstory to this, though.

Tawnia started a discussion a few days ago on the private developers group on Facebook. (A group I do not control, it should be noted.) Basically it's an attempt to rally the other developers in revolt against that unfair tyrant that runs VI-Control. Mike Greene this, Mike Greene that ... you know the drill. She didn't get any supporters, although in classic Tawnia Knox fashion, she did piss off some people along the way, making accusations of "virtue signaling" and calling one guy "Beyonce," which I still don't understand. It's a crazy (but entertaining!) discussion.

Anyway, in one of her posts yesterday, where she complained that no one was rallying with her, she said at least she made a "wonderful new friend" named Peter. Peter (PavlovsCat) has told me that they are indeed communicating, so I guess Peter's initial post here is part of their plan to shame me into submission. A dumb plan IMO, and believe me, I have things I'd rather be doing than this. But what can we do?

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Yeah I am not questioning your motives here Mike. As you know I am quite fond of VI-C and mister Green, so I wasn’t directing my “complaints” directly at you.

It’s more of a general feeling of being tired of the continuation of the same old discussion. I thought this was the thread that sort of exists or is tolerated for those idiots who don’t mind who’s right or wrong yet for some reason still love 8Dio products (or hate, that’s a viable option too) and want to discuss just that.

I like Anthology. I like Adachi. I like 8Dio products. I couldn't care less about backroom squabbles. Who's right, who's wrong, who's naughty, who's nice. Don't care. And while we're at it, I don't give a shit about Christian Henson's personal beliefs or the status of his association with Spitfire.

Now can we discuss sample libraries and related matters that don't involve petty middle school bullshit? I get enough of that in the real world.