LinuxSampler is proprietary and it's users commit copyright infringement

Link to good samples/soundfonts at http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/free_audio_data

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Drumfix
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by Drumfix »

Even if you don't like it, but the situation is very clear.

I wouldn't care too much about legal actions, though. Legal actions can only be taken by the copyright holders whose rights have been violated, and 3 of the 4 copyright holders of the libgig source code are linuxsampler developers...
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by rghvdberg »

FaTony wrote:
rghvdberg wrote:I think FaTony is saying that the licensing of LinuxSampler is faulty, not the usage of proprietary software.
Both.
Please don't deny me my freedom to use proprietary software ;-)
Lyberta
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by Lyberta »

Drumfix wrote:Even if you don't like it, but the situation is very clear.

I wouldn't care too much about legal actions, though. Legal actions can only be taken by the copyright holders whose rights have been violated, and 3 of the 4 copyright holders of the libgig source code are linuxsampler developers...
Here's what they say on their site: http://linuxsampler.org/faq.html#ls_bre ... ig_license
Doesn't LinuxSampler illegally link against libgig?

No! LinuxSampler does not "illegally" link against libgig, since the copyright holder (in this case of libgig) has all rights of his work and thus is not bound to his own license terms. The sole purpose of license terms is to grant other people certain rights to use the work.
Yes, they are not bound since they own exclusive rights but all the users are.
Drumfix
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by Drumfix »

Just digged into libgig code and licensing. The part contributed by the 4th (the non-linuxsampler) developer is LGPL, so the 3 linuxsampler developers are allowed to distribute linuxsampler as long as libgig is a used as shared library (which is the normal case) AND the 3 linuxsampler developers agree
to distribute libgig under a different license which then must be compatible with the LGPL.

But, as you say right, it is not allowed for anyone else.

What most people are not aware of is that contribution to a project does not make one the owner of the project. One still only has the copyright on the own contribution. Otherwise it would be easy to just add a patch to some project and the claim: "Wooh i contributed, so i'm an owner now and can distribute the whole thing under any license i like." This is NOT the case. Imagine you provide a patch to the linux kernel :)

The simple solution for the linuxsampler problem would be that the 3 linuxdevelopers agree to change the license of their parts of libgig also to LGPL.
Lyberta
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by Lyberta »

falkTX wrote:there's no point of discussing this here, the LS devs won't see this.
Too bad. I've heard that they plan to move away from GPL to their own license.
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by Lyberta »

Oh, by the way, Carla uses LinuxSampler backend. I couldn't find the license of Carla, but I think you should remove LinuxSampler and maybe use SFZero instead.
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rncbc
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by rncbc »

lemme tell ya a story.

i, meself, might be one of the developers in the LS roster. yes, i'm guilty to qsampler (GPL) and liblscp (LGPL). period.

ten years ago (yes, probably more), i've discussed, in a couple of times, face-2-face conversation, with cuse, about of this LS-vs-GPL-broken-license-thing, and, believe me, our "moral" stance is, or was, all about keeping it all under the GPL umbrella.

of course, i'm speaking on myself here, but the biggest problem the LS project faces is, mostly regarding the infamous GPL exception which everyone spits about (yep, it makes the GPL void, i know, we all know, don't get me wrong), is that then once original author (who isnot me, nor cuse), who ever wrote the proof-of-concept code almost 20 years ago, is now unreachable, or he doesn't even care about from where or whomever he's now.

there's no negotiation going on anymore. period, again.

now,

procrastination--in writing a brand new license terms--has been a long dead an issue here. for quite more than a decade now.

i'd say, just speculating here, probably, it will be a verbatim copy of the GPL (v2, i guess, that's was in effect back in the early days), with that infamous exception added: no more, no less. i can't even think of anything else.

anyway. let's cut the crap: all users of free/open-source software are, yes, free to exercise all or any of their 4 freedoms, no less. that's granted (by all LS devs, i'm sure).

just my 2c.
hth.
cheers
Lyberta
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by Lyberta »

I'm not sure exactly what do you mean by your previous post but here's another thing. Only backend is proprietary. If we develop our own backend, we can use all other libs (libgig, etc.) and frontends that are already there.
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Re: LinuxSampler is proprietary and devs commit copyright infringement

Post by rghvdberg »

rncbc wrote: anyway. let's cut the crap: all users of free/open-source software are, yes, free to exercise all or any of their 4 freedoms, no less. that's granted (by all LS devs, i'm sure).

just my 2c.
hth.
cheers
I think he's saying : don't try to provide a solution for a problem that isn't there.
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