That's a fair point. I'm not completely closed to the idea. I believe Ardour has a similar business model. Personally I would prefer to keep my sources private but rely on as many open source libraries as possible and contribute to those as well. Atleast this way I can give back to the ecosystem a little. The vast majority of my DSP code can be found in a package I maintain on Github called Ddsp.bluebell wrote: In the 90s I worked as a systems programmer on mainframe systems. I maintained IBM's transaction monitor and database system IMS DB/DC. Very expensive software. But it was shipped as source code, so you could (and I did) make modifications, completely legally. You could share those modfications in user groups.
So … I don't see why commercial plugins couldn't be available as source code. Of course it makes no sense to use some copy protection since it can be removed. It's probably not very attractive for programmers who make a living out of it. But it is possible.
Open Source code doesn't have to be free as in free beer.
Side Note: I'm not sure if any of the LV2 developers are active in this thread, but they really deserve so much more credit for making LV2 than they get. It's such a great format and not only for linux. Writing a wrapper for it was relatively painless and straightforward. I really hope to see it overtake VST!