[linux-audio-dev] License for sounds

David Olofson david at olofson.net
Wed Jan 14 14:35:38 UTC 2004


On Wednesday 14 January 2004 13.45, Jens M Andreasen wrote:
> Hi David!
>
> 1) Usually the demo sounds included with synthesizers are
> considered absolute freeware. Their purpose is to demonstrate that
> this synthesizer can do any sound just as well, or even better than
> the competition. Their purpose is to convince the prospective buyer
> that the light at the end of the tunnel is not (entirely) electric,
> and they should hand over their hard earned cash right away.

Right; that makes sense - but I'm not really trying to "sell" a 
synthesizer, but rather a solution for authoring and playback of 
sound effects and music in games, among other things.

The idea is to eventually have a large library of useful 
"bread'n'butter" sounds to use as is, or with slight modifications. 
(Those modifications could be done by visually tweaking variables 
that the scripts publish, rather than hacking the scripts.)

The Audiality synth itself is definitely *not* the dream tool for your 
average synth programmer - unless you're one of those who prefer to 
do it all in <insert preferred text editor here>. I don't have a GUI 
editor, and I'm not even sure I'll ever create one of the traditional 
"boxes and wires" kind. (I'm thinking about something like a text 
editor where recognized statements are replaced with graphical 
editors, for quick and easy real time tweaking.)


> 2) With a few tweeks, an otherwise very serious string quartet can
> be turned into something extremely silly, which you would probably
> not like to have coauthored.

Yes - that's why I don't feel like getting into Free/Open Source 
music. The idea just doesn't make sense to me. And these are just 
crappy demo songs anyway - forget about them! :-)


> 3) Although commercial tunes are played 24/7 on radio stations, you
> will not be able to recognize your own sounds, except in the case
> when they are used unaltered with no postprocessing (which makes
> the discussion of "derived work" moot.)

On the contrary, I usually recognize sounds based on sounds I have in 
my h/w synths. That's what I don't like about sampleplayers and 
sample libs; the few sounds that are really good usually have samples 
with so strong identity that it cannot realistically be programmed 
away.

That's sort of besides the point, though, as I don't really care. I 
don't want strings attached, unless there is some real advantage.


> That is to say: If it is
> not controlable, don't bother making any rules.

Exactly! That's the thought that's been causing my hesitating on this 
matter, but I didn't quite realize it until now.

Thanks. :-)

The only reason I'm considering not just placing them in the public 
domain is that I have this idea about encouraging people to 
contribute to the public library of Audiality sounds. However, a 
license cannot really enforce something like that. Can't force people 
to contribute to anything, whereas if they want to contribute to a 
library of free sounds, they'll just do it, one way or another, 
whether I support it or not.


So, it's probably X11, or just plain public domain.

Any real advantage of actually using a "real" license?


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

.- Audiality -----------------------------------------------.
|  Free/Open Source audio engine for games and multimedia.  |
| MIDI, modular synthesis, real time effects, scripting,... |
`-----------------------------------> http://audiality.org -'
   --- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---





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