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 :-) _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
