Re: [LAU] Is LS licensed? (was: [LAA] [ANN] gigedit 0.1.0)

On 10/17/07, Arnold Krille <arnold@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 17. Oktober 2007 schrieb Keith Sharp:
> > 2) The inclusion of the additional restriction means that LinuxSampler
> > cannot be distributed under a licence that is called the GPL. The GPL
> > FAQ[2] is quite clear on this. Additionally the FAQ states that
> > software distributed under the GPL + restrictions cannot be linked to
> > libraries under the GPL because the new licence (GPL + restrictions) is
> > almost certainly incompatible with the GPL.
>
> Which means the linuxsampler guys can't link to their own libgig! Someone
> should tell them about their problems.
>

Their change to GPL stated that you needed to ask for permission to
make a commercial application. I don't think it applies, in general,
to individuals using LS. I suspect that had the authors wanted
permission then they probably asked themselves and got an OK. ;-)

> And which means that its not a question of "is LS under a truly-free(TM)
> license or not" but more "Does LS have a valid license at all?" Apart from
> the copyright the authors have.
>
> I still hope for someone who contributed to LS who wasn't asked about the
> license-change...

It depends deeply on what is meant by 'contributed'. As someone who
doesn't program I have always tried to make a strong contribution to
the programs I Was using most, primarily by helping with debugging and
giving the best feedback I could. In the case of LS I spent countless
hours, easily 300-400, going through and comparing the operation of LS
to GSt for hundreds of gig file, finding places where the program or
its file handling needed to be improved, finding bugs in it's handling
of numerous gig file parameters, midi implementation, incorrect
voicing (both pitch and volume), CPU usage, etc. Unfortunately that
sort of contribution is not valued by all project leaders and was not
valued by that group.
After all that work I was not asked for any permission to use my
information and the work derived from it in a different license. I
contributed under GPL and then had my information used in ways I had
not contemplated. The change was made by those who had CVS write
access and that was the end of the story. Unfortunately that's the way
it goes because I didn't contribute with a written agreement by the
development team not to change the license. My mistake.

When this happened I stopped using the program and disassociated
myself from the group. I've not used LS, QS, libgig or any of the rest
of it since.

>
> And no, using GigaSampler is not an options for me (altough I own a copy of
> that app, came with my Tascam) because that would mean a) booting the other
> system, b) getting latencies >500ms and c) getting the sound delivered on the
> builtin-speakers of the laptop. And I don't feel like fiddling around in that
> OS to try to fix b and c.

I understand item a). I don't understand item b) but no need to
discuss. GSt, for me, is no different than any other external synth in
terms of latency - MIDI or audio.

>
> Can't someone write/adopt a sampler to use gig-files through libgig? Shouldn't
> be to hard for someone already knowing how to write samplers?

I've always hoped that someone not associated with the project might
have kept a pre-license-change version of the code, when it was still
GPL. Had they done that then I would happily join a new group and help
out as I did before, with the caveat that I be included in authors.
;-) Unfortunately I've not run across anyone that did keep the old
code and my understanding is that all pre-license-change versions were
removed from CVS thus stopping folks interested in this sort of
project from going back and grabbing it after the fact.

Like Fernando said, every time this subject comes up it does generate
a new, long thread! Sorry!

Cheers,
Mark
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Received on Thu Oct 18 00:15:06 2007