14 Jan
2004
14 Jan
'04
6:34 a.m.
I'm trying to figure out what license to use for the demo sounds and
songs that come with Audiality. I don't think the songs are of much
interest beyond demonstrating the engine, so I'll probably just ask
that people don't use them in their projects without permission.
However, the sounds (or rather, the scripts that render them) are
intended to be usable in about the same way as the rest of Audiality.
That is, as is or modified, in Free/Open Source, freeware and
commercial projects. No royalties, no advertising clause or anything.
Here's the problem: I'd like derived sounds to remain open source, but
I'm not sure it makes sense to require it, like the LGPL does. The
X11 license might be more sensible. What do you think?
//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 ---
14 Jan
14 Jan
7:07 a.m.
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 08:31 pm, David Olofson wrote:
...
Here's the problem: I'd like derived sounds to remain open source, but
I'm not sure it makes sense to require it, like the LGPL does. The
X11 license might be more sensible. What do you think?
There are a number of CC license variations, I like this one...
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
--markc
8:47 a.m.
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.
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.
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.) That is to say: If it is not controlable, don't
bother making any rules.
cheers // Jens M Andreasen
On ons, 2004-01-14 at 11:31, David Olofson wrote:
I'm trying to figure out what license to use for
the demo sounds and
songs that come with Audiality. I don't think the songs are of much
interest beyond demonstrating the engine, so I'll probably just ask
that people don't use them in their projects without permission.
However, the sounds (or rather, the scripts that render them) are
intended to be usable in about the same way as the rest of Audiality.
That is, as is or modified, in Free/Open Source, freeware and
commercial projects. No royalties, no advertising clause or anything.
Here's the problem: I'd like derived sounds to remain open source, but
I'm not sure it makes sense to require it, like the LGPL does. The
X11 license might be more sensible. What do you think?
//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 ---
9:30 a.m.
On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 01:45:03PM +0100, 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.
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.
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.) That is to say: If it is not controlable, don't
bother making any rules.
4) "Derived sounds?" Holy crap, what a can of worms /that/ is.
5) Preset patches and sequences are used all the time in commercial tunes, and a lot of
people will choose to use a synth just because they heard that so-and-so used
this-and-that to get a certain sound (808 clap/cowbell? Motif strings?). So, if your demos
are any good (they must be if you want to license them ;), it might be worthwhile to let
people use them as they wish. I don't know if this even applies to free software,
though, so who knows, you might actually need to clamp down on those damned preset-using
IP thieves.
6) Profit?!
cheers // Jens M Andreasen
On ons, 2004-01-14 at 11:31, David Olofson wrote:
I'm trying to figure out what license to use
for the demo sounds and
songs that come with Audiality. I don't think the songs are of much
interest beyond demonstrating the engine, so I'll probably just ask
that people don't use them in their projects without permission.
However, the sounds (or rather, the scripts that render them) are
intended to be usable in about the same way as the rest of Audiality.
That is, as is or modified, in Free/Open Source, freeware and
commercial projects. No royalties, no advertising clause or anything.
Here's the problem: I'd like derived sounds to remain open source, but
I'm not sure it makes sense to require it, like the LGPL does. The
X11 license might be more sensible. What do you think?
//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 ---
11:07 a.m.
On Wednesday 14 January 2004 10.31, will(a)malefactor.org wrote:
[...]
4) "Derived sounds?" Holy crap, what a can
of worms /that/ is.
Indeed - but I don't really care, actually. I just want to make the
stuff as useful as possible to as many as possible. Just putting them
in the public domain is probably the best way.
5) Preset patches and sequences are used all the time
in commercial
tunes, and a lot of people will choose to use a synth just because
they heard that so-and-so used this-and-that to get a certain sound
(808 clap/cowbell? Motif strings?). So, if your demos are any good
(they must be if you want to license them ;), it might be
worthwhile to let people use them as they wish.
Right. Which is why I'm asking what the right license terms for that
would be. Copyright law isn't it, so I have to say *something* - even
if it's just "This file is in the Public Domain."
I don't know if
this even applies to free software, though, so who knows, you might
actually need to clamp down on those damned preset-using IP
thieves.
I don't think the software has anything to do with it, though. For
example, while the Doom "2.5D" engine is Free/Open Source, the Doom
and Doom II data files are not. Data and code, or even parts of each,
can have completely independent licenses, as long as the combination
doesn't result in violating any of the liceneses.
6) Profit?!
Profit? Well, a synth is useless without sounds, so I want a huge
library of good sounds, and I want them to be available to anyone for
any kind of use, in order to attract more users (that is, potential
contributors) to the project.
I prefer releasing my software as Free/Open Source for the same
reason, although in that case, I'm not very interested in people just
stealing lots of my code without even reporting bugs or contributing
in any other way to me or anyone else using the code.
Dunno why my view differs slightly there, but at least I have one
excuse: The licenses I use guarantee that *I* can't steal "my" code
back and start selling binaries after people tested it, fixed my bugs
and added loads of features. I *think* that slightly improves my
chances of receiving contributions, but I can't prove it. :-)
//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 ---
2:40 p.m.
--- David Olofson <david(a)olofson.net> wrote:
On Wednesday 14 January 2004 10.31,
will(a)malefactor.org wrote:
[...]
Actually, I think the solution is rather simple.
Basically, a patch for a synth can be thought of as a
"sound" in the sonic sense and a "patch" in the
software sense. The "sound" is public domain because
of the absurdities already discussed. Any sound made
by synths, closed or open source are almost always
public domain. However, the patch may be licensed as
you wish. The way I see it, either
A) There doesn't need to be a special license. You can
put the patch under any license and it will allow the
user to use the sound as they wish, but puts
restrictions/conditions if he/she wishes to
redistribute the sound.
or
B) A special license must be drafted to allow this.
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4) "Derived sounds?" Holy crap, what a
can of
worms /that/ is.
3:57 p.m.
On Wednesday 14 January 2004 19.36, Thomas Webb wrote:
--- David Olofson <david(a)olofson.net> wrote:
Interesting point.
On Wednesday 14 January 2004 10.31,
will(a)malefactor.org wrote:
[...]
Actually, I think the solution is rather simple.
Basically, a patch for a synth can be thought of as a
"sound" in the sonic sense and a "patch" in the
software sense. The "sound" is public domain because
of the absurdities already discussed. Any sound made
by synths, closed or open source are almost always
public domain. However, the patch may be licensed as
you wish. 4) "Derived sounds?" Holy crap, what a
can of
worms /that/ is. The way I see it, either
A) There doesn't need to be a special license. You can
put the patch under any license and it will allow the
user to use the sound as they wish, but puts
restrictions/conditions if he/she wishes to
redistribute the sound.
or
The problem with this in my case, is that the normal music
distribution format would probably be "modules". That is, compressed
archives containing a MIDI file and some scripts. The main reasons
are file size (the ten demos + sounds fit in 62 kB, and ~55 kB of
that is MIDI files) and not having to decide on rendering quality or
compression settings.
So, you *would* actually use the patches - not just the resulting
audio data.
B) A special license must be drafted to allow this.
...or I just put the patches *and* sounds in the public domain. What
do I have to lose...?
//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 ---
10:38 a.m.
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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will＠malefactor.org