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

Simon Wise simonzwise at gmail.com
Thu Feb 7 13:54:51 UTC 2013


On 07/02/13 20:42, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 7:20 AM, Simon Wise<simonzwise at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> On 07/02/13 20:04, Paul Davis wrote:

>
> i was in communication (both email and in person) with people at steinberg
> in the early 2000's.
>
> they had no particular antipathy to open source.
>
> they had two problems:
>
>      (1) they did not want to see the VST spec diverge as a result of people
> adding new features to the API
>           and distributing the result, and then over time more people
> starting to use the extended version rather
>           than the one that steinberg controlled. hence: no redistribution
> of the SDK.
>
>      (2) their lawyers. lots of people on this list under-estimate the
> awareness that lawyers have for open
>           source issues. steinberg's (and later yamaha's too) simply didn't
> really get the issues that open
>           source development had with their license terms, and as a result
> were more than reluctant to modify
>           the license. in the end, inaction won out over action, as is
> typically the case.


so the problem then was originally an unintended side effect of a different 
policy. Then it was brought to their attention, at that time they considered it 
seriously enough to consult their lawyers and make a serious response.

They actively decided not to change their policy and continued to refuse to 
license FLOSS distribution of binaries for the next 10 years.

So a decade later it is no longer an oversight or mistake, it is now an active 
"we don't care".


Simon


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