[LAU] VST and legal issues

[Rui Nuno Capela]

Dave Phillips wrote:
> Grammostola Rosea wrote:
>> I don't get the licence issue of VST on linux completely, help me out with this.
>>
>>
>> - Building Ardour, Qtractor, LMMS with VST-support is illegal, right?
>>   
> No. It is illegal to redistribute the Steinberg SDK (required for 
> building VST plugins). Its license is incompatible with many free 
> software licenses and the SDK cannot be added to typical Linux distros.
> 
> Btw, the developers of LMMS have reverse-engineered the required header 
> files from the Steinberg SDK, so it may be legally feasible to use that 
> code instead of the Steinberg headers.

I do have my doubts about this part.

The Steinberg license _explicitly_ prohibits the reverse-engineering of
the VST-SDK, not only the distribution or selling. Whether it's moot or
not is beyond me, IANAL, but IMHO, I'm afraid the LMMS/DSSI-VST vestige
header won't stand much in case of litigation.

byee
-- 
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc at rncbc.org