8 Dec
2005
8 Dec
'05
6:43 p.m.
On 12/8/05, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando(a)ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote:
I believe it was in March sometime. The LS guys have been pretty
forthcoming and have kept people on the list informed about this, to a
small extent. They have made a strong statement, which I have not
verified, that the tarball releases from linuxsampler.org have the GPL
license and only code taken from the CVS server have the change.
(Subject to my memory. Don't take anything I say as the gospel truth.)
Note that this
license modification was not in the latest official
release the last time I looked. It was only in the CVS version so
there is an opportunity to fork the database and put a development
team together to keep it truly Open Source, should someone care enough
to do so.
When was that?
A cvs snapshot that I packaged for experimental purposes dated
2005.01.20 does not have the "commercial usage" exception.
Was there any "official" tarball release before 0.3.1? That one (and
subsequent ones) come with the GPL but-not-really-GPL license. So no, it
is not only CVS.
Not sure. Now that I look at the web site they have the same LS-0.3.3
file for both stable and unstable. Probably someone is going to have
to either check the mailing list archives to find out if they've gone
with this license change for good. I no longer subscribe so I'm
concerned that my information is getting too out of date. I was told
that they would keep me informed but maybe I missed a message.
Anyone intersted in further study could easily discover the U.S.
patent numbers that were originally licensed to NemeSys. (Not Tascam!)
If someone cannot do that for themselves then they probably could
figure out someone who does know the numbers and ask so they could
read the patents for themselves.
Please note that while I am greatly disappointed that all of this has
happened I still thinkLS is a really great piece of work and I, for
one, still have great respect for all the folks that have done this
work.
With best regards,
Mark