JUCE Announces Acquisition by PACE

Hi, Tom.
Are you still the leader of the JUCE team? I mean, are you and Ed still remain in ROLI, or together moved to PACE?
And is reuk originally work in ROLI or PACE?

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Minor style changes are precisely what a lot of JUCE customers do care about. One of the pieces of feedback we always get about why people use JUCE is its consistent code style and how easy it is to dive into the source code and, as an open-source commercial library, this is one of its main selling points.

In an ideal world, yes, everyone would be able to contribute to JUCE and help the library grow, but the reality is that the majority of JUCE PRs need to be completely rewritten to go into the library - people rarely match the style guidelines and it’s unlikely that the changes have been tested thoroughly. Even when they are tested it’s hard to reason about how minor changes to the internals of JUCE can cause issues in the rest of the library - even we’re bitten by this sometimes and we work on the internals of JUCE every day!

And then there’s the issue of maintainence - who maintains the code once its in the library? Are PR authors going to stick around to answer questions and fix bugs in the code they’ve submitted? In our experience that’s highly unlikely. For us, adding new features to JUCE is a constant weighing up of usefulness vs maintainence burden. Yes, we have more resources now we’re not at ROLI but the reality is that the JUCE team is still small for the size of the codebase, and if we were to merge every PR that we get we’d spend all of our time fixing bugs in them and no new features would ever get added!

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Tell you what would be a good outcome though - a public JIRA or similar for it with every bug and change request on :slight_smile:

At least then you’d know your request or submission was definitely being ignored :slight_smile:

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Github already provides this.

Best is maybe to clean github one with outdated and won’t do issue/PR and start clean.

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Yeah - it’s just there’s a lot of encouragement to use the forum for reporting issues so all the issues aren’t actually on the issue tracker :slight_smile:

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Ed, Reuben and myself are now employed by Raw Material Software Limited (trading as JUCE), a UK company dedicated to the development of the JUCE framework and ADC. Pace Anti-Piracy Inc is the new owner of Raw Material Software Limited.

We were hoping to make the acquisition announcement in a few weeks, when we could also reveal some more concrete information about some upcoming features, but some of the more observant members of the audio developer community noticed the filings in Company House.

So, now that the news has broken, we would also like to let people know that we will shortly begin working on adding accessibility support to JUCE. This won’t be ready in time for the launch of JUCE 6, but is currently scheduled for JUCE 6.1. Once JUCE 6 has been released we will be reaching out to the community for feedback from people who require accessibility frameworks to use audio software and companies where accessibility support is crucial. We already have some generous offers of assistance from a handful of groups but opening up this process to everyone will benefit the largest number of people.

We will also be making improvements to how JUCE licenses are managed. A new portal where JUCE users can configure their current license, update their subscriptions, and view invoices and receipts for their purchases will replace the limited functionality provided by MyROLI. We’re currently in the process of transitioning away from ROLI’s web infrastructure and will provide a more detailed update when the new services are ready.

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I’m still using the forum to get fixes.
We should keep in mind the JUCE team indeed has lots on its head.
However, It would be nice is to have a transparent feature/PR workflow with the JUCE team.

Here are few PRs / fixes etc that got buried (as an example of current situation being less than ideal I guess for some developers, especially for bugfixes)

And here is an example of a post that was fixed while other was buried:

Having said that,
Over the past years, JUCE team really became more responsive to bugfixes. so indeed sometimes it takes less than a week to see a bugfix commited by the JUCE team.

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I get a lot of your points, and I wasn’t suggesting the JUCE team should be merging PRs without discussion and modification where necessary. What I’m suggesting is that PRs should get some kind of a response even if it’s a “thanks we’ll take a look at some point”. If the team do not have the resources to respond to and review PRs then it should be made clear before someone puts the effort into creating one; or switch off the facility completely. I also understand there is overlap between GitHub and the forum.

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Can we be confident that the GPL option will remain in the future?

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That was not the slightest what I wrote. I appreciate the work you are doing, and I see very valuable contributions. With no word I commented the quality of your code (I never seen it anyway, so why would I?). And I am aware of Yair and the other people at SoundRadix’ work, which is great.
I never sat in the chair to give a verdict of what should or shouldn’t be in the codebase.
All I am saying, that there should be a communication about additions beforehand, so the direction of the framework stays consistent.

Nothing more.

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The GPL option will remain! This is something the JUCE team cares a lot about.

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I’m a JUCE customer and I’m having urgent problems with the with the pace PACE infrastructure since a few days, especially with AAX signing. Where and how I can get support? (support-area is greyed out at PACE central).

Hi,
I am not as frequent a poster as a lot of you guys and I realize this is a little rude for me to post. Does JUCE turn over a profit that Is greater than what it was sold for? Users are saying Roli purchased JUCE for Jules. If JUCE is not a bargain then what other motives come into the purchase? People trust JUCE, but PACE receives a lot of unwarranted anger, that probably would be better directed at the hackers. Will PACE provide better integration into JUCE? Will there ever be disadvantages choosing not to use PACE as your software protection when programming with JUCE?
Cheers
ps I know asking this on the amazing JUCE forum everyone will be kind in this discussion. I wish other forums were this well respected?

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That’s OT, but in the license manager, open the PACE central, there you will find links to support.

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Thanks for your reply. I have a few more question.
First, since PACE is an American company, will you guys move to American, or stay in U.K. and working remote with PACE?
Second, since Raw Material Software is a company founded by Jules (if I rememer it correctly), is he still a shareholder of the company after this acquisition? And who’s now the CEO or president of the company?

Sorry, I went to check myself, and found out the support in PACE central is indeed greyed out. The only thing I found is
https://www.ilok.com/#!support

Maybe a leftover from the maintenance they announced…

BTW. just to remind readers, I left ROLI over a year ago, so I don’t speak on their behalf. I am just an engaged user, just like anybody else here.

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That’s not rude at all; we’ve seen similar concerns shared by people on different forums.

PACE have been embedded in the audio software industry for longer than JUCE itself and they understand the importance of a strong and open community; the more people that are creating software the larger their addressable market is. Anything that would raise the barrier for people getting started (like requiring an iLok or any other specific software protection service) would ultimately backfire. It’s also important to note that a large number of PACE’s existing customers use JUCE, so when JUCE is improved the revenues of those customers increases and PACE benefits as well. By providing a solid foundation from which JUCE can grow PACE has made the economic future of everyone using JUCE much more secure. ROLI’s financial situation is less robust - you can find some of the details if you do a little digging online.

There’s certainly some merit in making PACE’s tools easier to use with JUCE. If you’re creating AAX plug-ins then you will need to use their SDK anyway, but at the moment the JUCE team is fully occupied with delivering JUCE 6.

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The JUCE team, and Raw Material Software Limited, will remain in the UK.

You can see the details of RMSL in Companies House. Allen, Andrew and myself are directors.

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As a side note, UVI has been working with Pace for more than 15 years and they are clearly trustworthy people and are not only “commercial” guys. I honestly don’t mind them to take control of Juce and I think it’s for the best. (UVI is a Juce users since 2008 FWIW)

There probably won’t be any fancy NAMM Juce presentation anymore but honestly I prefer this kind of money to be spent in the development aspect :slight_smile:

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I have no good feelings about this. But the sun is shining right now, so I will go out.

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