the example of snap-on being the inventor of ratcheting socket wrenches is totally incorrect - the patent was filed over 50 years before snap-on was founded... the other companies are NOT copying snap-on! - if you don't believe me go to wikipedia and look at the pages for snap-on and socket wrench!! the 1864 patent is clearly mentioned on the socket wrench page and no mention of a patent is cited on the snap-on (founded 1920) page - the snap-on marketing slogan is just that - marketing! what snap-on may (or may not) have innovated with is their sales method...
-- JimHowell1970
I did not mean to imply that Snap-On invented the idea of the socket wrench, but they certinainly created the version of it which is well known today. Whether or not they were the original inventor is besides the point here, the point is their specific design has become a standard, and was copied by bigger companies down to every last cosmetic detail: the handle shape, the location of the decorative grooves around it, the shape of the head, the way the pawls work inside, etc. It's no different than the situation with Maths, for example. Make Noise, like Snap-On, wasn't the first: Buchla started it. Serge refined it. Make Noise refined it further. In the end Maths, like Snap-On, became the standard. And then, others started knocking it off, even down to the minor cosmetic details. As I mentioned before, a Harbor Freight ratchet is a much closer copy of a Snap-On than an Abacus is a copy of a Maths. If you want another example go compare a Harbor Freight pliers wrench with a Knipex.
beds, for example, have been around for thousands of years - the earliest known mattress is 77000 years old, bookcases have almost definitely been around since the earliest book (wikipedia says roughly 1500 years) and the concept of shelves in an open box, as a piece of furniture probably pre-date that by a long way... tables are at least 4500 years (again wikipedia)... the earliest shirt 5000 years (wikipedia) etc etc
What is the point of this statement? Are you implying that it is acceptable to buy from asshole corporations when the product is old?
again you're comparing "mass market" to "niche market", "mass produced" to "artisanal"
Again, why does that matter? Is it okay to buy mass market products from assholes but not artisinal products?
For me, there's a difference between modular synths and guitars in the same way that there's a difference between experimental and pop music. Or an outside comparison - go and chess. The former is small and the latter is big. That causes the communities of the former to be rather close-knit everybody knows one another kind of places whereas the latter are rather anonymous. So when a bully enters, the latter will shrug and go on minding their business. Whereas the former will close ranks and protest.
-- Arrandan
I think you're on to something, but I'm not so sure it's "Small vs. Big". I think it's more about what people are passionate about and what they are not. Here we are on a Synth forum so obviously we care a lot about our hobby or music career so, like you said, we notice when a bully shows up. But the bullies are everywhere else too, it's just that we're ignorant of many of them. We don't see them because we don't look that closely into areas which aren't our personal hobbies or interests. Mechanics are fed up with ripoffs of Snap-On tools....most of us here probably weren't even aware of the ripoffs existing, just as they are completely unaware who rips off modular snyths. In Japan Go and Shogi are big while western-style chess is much smaller. It all depends on your knowledge, and our knowledge is greater in our areas of interest.