Subject: RE: [linux-audio-dev] Re: proposed initial DTD for LADSPA-gui-xml .. licensing issues ...
From: Richard W.E. Furse (richard_AT_muse.demon.co.uk)
Date: Sun Nov 26 2000 - 23:09:22 EET
I've been meaning to slap a LGPL or API-equivalent on LADSPA once there was
enough consensus & stability in LADSPA's usage. Now we have quite a few
hosts and plugins it seems that this has worked out and it's probably time.
[Another thing to add to the list of things to do... (BTW I've not
forgotten about the non-causal stuff, a prototype is on its way and I have
a good number of days off work this month.)]
There have been LADSPA closed-source plugins before and I think this
possibility is useful for the future. My port of Freeverb was closed source
while Jezar was trying to sell the code for hardware implementation.
Eventually he got fed up being asked for source support and went complete
free (not even GPL - what do people make of that then?) so now Freeverb is
in the CMT (under GPL).
In general I'm somewhat "on the fence" when it comes to the GPL/LGPL
debate. I think it should be very much up to the individual developer to
make this call on a package-by-package basis. Paul's coding of Ardour is an
amazing act of generosity and to expect others picking up the code to
behave in a similar way seems very natural.
On the other hand, it would be nice to have some agreed routing API to pipe
audio and control data between applications (and machines) and I think it
would be useful for musicians could use this with both free and commercial
software. We probably ought to be speccing-up something of this ilk
sometime soon. Perhaps we could use something like ALSA or aRts [although
I'm not sure how easy it would be to separate a simple API (probably
smaller than LADSPA) from the infrastructure of aRts].
BTW, I like the sound of the Paul's LADSPA XML GUI spec (although I'm no
XML expert). I have a suspicion that it will not suffice as a long-term
general-purpose do-everything GUI for LADSPA, but I don't think it has to
be seen in this way. It certainly does much good and no harm, as long as we
can find a safe way to glue it on to the existing LADSPA standard (if this
is necessary at all). I need to put some thought into this before
commenting further...
--Richard
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Barton-Davis [SMTP:pbd_AT_Op.Net]
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2000 5:33 PM
To: Benno Senoner
Cc: linux-audio-dev_AT_ginette.musique.umontreal.ca
Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: proposed initial DTD for LADSPA-gui-xml
.. licensing issues ...
[...]
>BTW: what's the current legal status of LADSPA , can one write closed
source
>plugins ?
Its ambiguous. There is no license for ladspa.h at all. This does need
to be cleared up, but I am sure that the intent is that you can indeed
write closed source plugins.
--p
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