[Consortium] re: VST licensing progress

[Paul Davis]

On Fri, 2006-11-03 at 09:25 -0500, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
> >  > (my
> > > research so far has led me to Steinberg's headquarters in Germany, as
> > > apparently Yamaha has nothing to do with it).
> > 
> > Not only does Yamaha own Steinberg, but they put one of their own people
> > in as managing director:
> 
> Yes, Yamaha does own Steinberg, but that is not what my comment was
> addressing. What I meant is that in the Yamaha headquarters they appeared to
> not only care much about the entire issue, but were apparently also unable
> to help me in any shape/form. Their only suggestion was to talk to the
> German Steinberg HQ... So, apparently the Steinberg's HQs is where the IP
> decisions in respect to Steinberg are still being made (unless I was given a
> run-around treatment which is difficult to say for sure until the suggested
> lead is investigated).
> 
> > Having said that, there is at least one existing VST on Linux
> > implementation that uses a proprietary application layer, so from
> > Steinberg's viewpoint the current SDK licence is perhaps not a
> > problematic one.
> 
> And which also includes VST headers with its source without Steinberg's
> explicit permission and doing so legally? If so, which one is it and how did
> they pull that one off?

its perfectly legal to use VST in any app.

what is not legal is redistributing the headers (or any other part of
the SDK). this redistribution is the issue for GPL'ed applications
because it means that the authors cannot distribute all the code
required to build the application.

i do not have any news from SSL, but i will prod the people who are
talking to Steinberg. it will not hurt to have as many people as
possible raising this with Steinberg - they know its an issue, they just
have to (a) pick a license (b) use it.