Re: [LAD] GPL and plugins

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Victor Lazzarini
<Victor.Lazzarini@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> Then there is the situation where you write a plugin using VST (and its
> non-free license) and GPL. GPL should 'contaminate' the plugin making it
> Free, but then Steinberg will come back at you for breaking its license.
> Surely if you use GPL code, then you need to publish your header files too.
>
> Sorry, I did not mean to make this discussion longer than it needs to be,
> but...

I think that situation is simpler, and is just as you surmise -- you
can't redistribute a plugin that claims to be under the GPL if it uses
the VST SDK headers.

There _are_ some VST plugins out there that use the SDK but claim to
be under the GPL, and I think that is really borne of frustration with
the current impossibility of "doing it properly" because of the
restrictive license for the SDK headers (most painfully, the SDK
license's reverse-engineering clause effectively forbids publishing
source for a plugin that _doesn't_ use the SDK, if you have already
accepted the SDK license).

So I expect the view is that, so long as nobody with a stake in the
software objects to it, then at least the license has described what
the plugin's author would like to happen in an ideal world. It's a
grey-market situation. You wouldn't be able to include such a plugin
in a typical Linux distribution.

Chris
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Received on Tue Jun 22 12:15:03 2010