Re: [LAU] Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano

From: Roberto Gordo Saez <roberto.gordo@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Thu Sep 18 2008 - 00:57:52 EEST

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 09:54:45PM +0200, Arnold Krille wrote:
> And if you think linuxsampler is bad because of the non-commercial license,
> all art CC-BY-NC is bad. [...]

While I personally support reutilization and sharing of art, I don't
think all art under CC-BY-NC is bad! Even the FSF consider officially
acceptable to use CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-NC for some kind of works (not
software):

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#OtherLicenses

> It feels kind of irritating that the ls-guys had to
> include such a statement, but on the other hand I do understand their reasons
> to do so. They could have refined it to say "without our notice/approval"
> which would have helped distributions, but I think all but the core debian
> includes linuxsampler without troubles (and debian would be the only
> true-non-commercial distribution who wouldn't even get into problems
> there...).

I know that my friend Marcos Guglielmetti had some trouble to include
linuxsampler in his distribution (Musix GNU/Linux). Im not sure if he
is packaging it currently (I think is not), but I remember to have read
his concerns here in the LAU list.

I do also understand their reasons, just I prefer not to accept them.

> Maybe "not developed as a closed format and only published later on without
> input from the world/community and without room/hooks for extensions".
> I don't think I have a definitive answer (apart from that LV2 would be a truly
> free format because it allows so many extension you have to ask what actually
> is defined by the "standard"), but I think "not a free format because there
> is no truly free[tm] implementation" is not a sane way of thinking.
> However I do think (and respect) that "I won't support it because there is no
> free implementation" is a valid reason for (not) doing something. It is your
> time and effort after all. (And I can't wait to get my music machine up and
> running again to test your soundfont.)

:-O

But that was not was I was trying to say!
Please let me explain. Read this first:

http://www.linfo.org/free_file_format.html

I can't find the text in the FSF site, but as far I remember it was more
or less the same.

One thing I've forgotten: patents. If patents are actively enforced in
either of those formats (like the mp3 case), I will reject those
formats, of course. Fortunately, it seems that it is not the case (as
far as I know).

For myself, I usually find a free implementation much more "open" than
the documentation itself. Personally, I usually prefer to study a free
program than to read docs when I need to learn a new file format.

As I've said in my first email, even if the formats were closed, I will
have no moral problem to use sf2 or gig if there were a free
implementation exists. Think like a GPL program that changes its
license in a particular version, previous versions will always remain
to be free. If fluidsynth or other free software support a particular
version of the gig format in the future, and then the gig format
changes, I will make gig banks that comforms exclusively the version
with free implementation, even if it is old or contain less features.

Of course I would not be happy with a proprietary format. For example,
if the flash format is completely reverse engineered and implemented
in the future, I would still not be happy with that one company
controlling it. That's a very serious practical inconvenience for me,
but I will accept to use the free implementation with not so much of
a moral problem. I even own a lot of legally purchased sound banks and
proprietary software, though I try to avoid them whenever I can.

It looks to me that our differences are mainly in what is a free
format and what is not... but the real big problem that is bugging me
is not that one format is free and the other is not (I never looket at
gig internal specifications, if available, so I don't know how open is
it compared to sf2) instead, as I've said in the first email, my
problem is that, in order to use my soundfonts, other people would be
required to install linuxsampler under linux. For example, my friend
Marcos is also a supporter of free software and free soundfonts, and
he usually tries my soundfonts and gives feedback in the freepats
list... so he (and probably others) would need to install linuxsampler
to try my soundfonts. I really don't want to do that, I would feel
like the evil, and nobody could pay me enough money to make me feel
better :-)

> Well, I am not a lawyer. A while back I tried to get a lawyers opinion to
> making some source open source but that lead to three different answer (from
> that one guy) so I waited until I was not employed there anymore but still
> working on that project...
> But what I learned is: You need to state the copyright-holders of each file in
> the file. Otherwise it definitely gets lost (it can still "get lost" but that
> leads to legal action). And you should state the license.

Hmmm... I suggest you to find another lawyers, seriously!!! please do!

If you were working under a contract, you need to get a written notice
from your employer first. You absolutely need it, even if you do that
work in your free time! Then, it is *very* important and encouraged to
place copyright notices and clearly state the license, though it is
not required by copyright law. Some licenses like the GPL requires the
software to carry an appropriate copyright notice, and suggest to place
a notice in every file. I'm not sure it is a legal requirement of the
GPL to place a notice in every file, but I can say you for sure that a
lot of GPL programs included in GNU/Linux distributions do not include
the copyright notice in every file (the should, for clarity, I think)
and some of them only in the readme.

I've been studying laws since years, contact with me privately if you
need help. Although I'm not a lawyer, I really think I'm able to
provide better advice that your lawyer (but I'm not surprised, I know
of lawyers giving wrong advice and I also suffered from it),
I succesfully won some other copyright issues in the past and I'll be
gald to help you within my possibilities (with no warranty, though)
provided that it is for a free software project ;-)

> And the LS-files (that is the source files themself) state "GPLv2 or later".
> So from my point of view it would be legal to take the source files, tar them
> up with a new readme (without the exception) and publish that.
> That wouldn't be very nice to the LS-devs, but as far as I know, it should be
> legal...

It would be nice :-) but I think is not legal. At least that was the
case with a semi-proprietary driver for a modem I hacked once upon a
time...

> BTW: that "GPLvX or any later" is somehow dangerous, because you don't know
> what the later versions of the license contain. Could be they get bought/sued
> by evil opponents and the v4 is not free at all. Would make your code
> licensed under a non-free license...

:-D

In practice it is much more dangerous to stay at a fixed version on the
GPL (under Spanish copyright laws for sure, in other countries I can't
say). It is very large subject to explain, please, man, believe in me
this time...

> I hate these discussions about legal things. Which is the reason my
> (private) codes are (L)GPL.

And me too... but I'm my case, no matter how much I hate legal things,
I suffer from them all the time... you can find my discussions in
debian-legal, in gpl-violations, and even in the real world I'm always
involved with laws... I really, really hate them, but somehow they
follow me everywhere :-S

Freedom, in every sense, in free software and in my personal life, has
an essential importance to me, and I think that's the reason I can't
avoid to be involved with laws all the time, the reason because I fight
a lot when I'm not happy with something, the reson for which
I frequently got involved in legal conversations, the reason for which
I had no mobile phone in my whole life (until now, I'm about to order a
Neo FreeRunner, and it will be my first mobile phone). Maybe an
extremist life (and that's nothing, you will be surprised how far I can
go sometimes) but that's the way I am. My excuses if this kind of
conversation was a pain to you... just to be clear, it is still very
unlikely that I would made those gig files, but keep trying if you
want :-)
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Received on Thu Sep 18 04:15:01 2008

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