On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 7:20 AM, Simon Wise <simonzwise@gmail.com> wrote:

On 07/02/13 20:04, Paul Davis wrote:

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 7:01 AM, Simon Wise<simonzwise@gmail.com> wrote:

In this case it is clearly the intention of Steinberg not to allow FLOSS
implementations,

not true. or put even more clearly, it was *not* Steinberg's intention to
forbid FLOSS plugins or hosts.

very interesting ... so the SDK license clause was trying to achieve something else?

I'm just reading the license, I don't have any other contact or means to know their intention, so I'm very ready to believe they had other reasons but it certainly reads as if they expect any host to get a license from them, and as far as I am aware those licenses are only available with payment to them. That would seem to exclude FLOSS distribution?

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.