LinuxSampler license, was Re: [linux-audio-dev] fst, VST 2.0, kontakt

[Andreas Kuckartz]

I have a simple question:

Which companies are (or have been) distributing LinuxSampler as part of
a package also including hardware and/or proprietary software?

Cheers,
Andreas
---

Paul Davis wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 10:22 +1000, Ryan Heise wrote:
>   
>> On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 05:55:11PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
>>     
>>> both guesses are wrong. i think it will be precise enough to say that a
>>> company expressed what appeared to be a serious interest in leveraging
>>> the existence of LS for its own plans. relationships changed between the
>>> various parties, and the LS developers were left in a situation where
>>> work they had already done might be used in ways they did not consent
>>> to. Meanwhile, the company felt that it was the LS developers who had
>>> failed to follow through on the agreement. i don't think its feasible to
>>> be more precise than this. 
>>>
>>> the core point of the story is that you cannot stop other organizations
>>> from making use of your GPL-licensed work even if you have entered into
>>> some different kind of arrangement with them. for some people, this
>>> represents a serious issue.
>>>       
>> Licensing software under the GPL is giving others consent to use that
>> software commercially in certain ways. If there was an additional
>> agreement with this specific company that they would not use it in some
>> of those ways, it still wouldn't stop other companies who haven't signed
>> that additional agreement to use the software in whatever way was
>> granted to them under the GPL. What confuses me is why the authors of
>> the software chose to release the code under the GPL and also didn't (as
>> it seems) want to consent to others using the software in some of the
>> ways granted by the GPL. Do I have the wrong picture? (maybe I do, I am
>> just going on the little information provided above.)
>>     
>
> there is a big difference in how a developer might see this depending on
> the relationship with the other party. lets take a concrete case that i
> *can* talk about freely. we are quite open about the fact that there are
> commercial organizations that have both financially supported Ardour's
> development and have also been evangelizing for it quite energetically
> in some key high end markets. that has created positive relationships to
> date.
>
> now suppose (and i want to stress that i am not for one moment
> suggesting that i believe that this will happen) that one such
> relationship turned ugly. lets say, really ugly. really ugly as in "if
> you ever even talk about how ugly this got, we'll see you in court, if
> not before.". or uglier. you get the idea.
>
> how do you think that i and the many other people who have worked on
> ardour would feel about allowing a company that ended up putting us in
> this situation to continue to ardour under the GPL?
>
> we would not be able to stop it, and i would hope that i would have the
> honor and class not to even try, but it would clearly leave a very sour
> taste in my mouth (and others' mouths too, i suspect).
>
> something broadly analogous to this happened to the LS guys. unless you
> can say in all sincerity that you'd be able to just wave it past you,
> smile sweetly and mutter "oh, that's just the GPL at work", i think you
> have to be careful when judging other people's actions.
>
> and for this history buffs, i seem to recall that it was precisely this
> kind of situation that gave rise to the Aladdin Public License, from the
> person who wrote GhostScript.
>
> --p
>
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