[LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?

[Simon Wise]

On 07/02/13 16:24, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 12:14 PM, david wrote:
>
>>>> Which appears to be forbidden by the VST license?
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
>>
>> So clean room design begins with reverse-engineering the original. Sounds
>> like it violates the VST license terms, since they expressly forbid
>> reverse-engineering ...
>
> I do realize that I sound pig-headed, but a license is an agreement.
> If you didn't sign one, how can you possibly violate the terms?

I think you are right, assuming those who did the reverse engineering had never 
accepted the Steinberg terms then I guess they can distribute their code ... 
which certainly isn't VST but happens to work with plugins that are designed for 
it. This is a well established practice ... GNU is Not Unix, samba just happened 
to work with microsoft stuff and both survived intense legal scrutiny ... both 
are very important projects.

I will buy commercial software occasionally if its worth it and runs on my 
systems but I prefer to use FLOSS licensed stuff where the developers have made 
their work publicly available ... for lots of reasons. However almost all the 
hardware I have is commercial to some extent. Surely if we want commercial 
hardware and software suppliers to respect and support Linux audio then we had 
better also respect and support the licensing they choose to release their work 
under, just as we expect them to respect the intentions of our copyleft 
licenses. I do believe that long term the FLOSS approach is stronger in a 
commercial as well as moral sense.

In this case it is clearly the intention of Steinberg not to allow FLOSS 
implementations, even if their licensing has a legal loophole and is 
ineffective. It is of course possible to reject the whole idea of IP, licenses 
and so forth as invalid and unreasonable and go completely free. At least it is 
you are a small enough target avoid the attentions of local law-enforcement 
agencies, or perhaps if you live somewhere that does not enforce IP laws.

But then it would be natural for companies that think they depend on licensing 
to reject us just as completely as we would reject them. Many hardware 
manufacturers see themselves that way. I think they could readily find other 
models of distribution and certainly several very successful corporations have 
already made a lot of money by embracing FLOSS, but many companies do not (yet?) 
see this. It is a bit difficult to work with audio without using something 
commercial in the hardware chain, especially if you want cheaper hardware and 
are not willing or able to spend huge amounts of time developing and tweaking 
DIY hardware. Maybe one day we will develop affordable FLOS hardware, we already 
have FLOSS plugin interfaces and perhaps effort is better spent supporting them.

Simon