[Freepats] Re: Completely free instrument samples for freepats

[Mark Constable]

On Friday 07 April 2006 19:20, Roberto Gordo Saez wrote:
> From now, I will continue with the conversations using the mailing
> list, since we are all talking about same things and it is much more
> transparent in this way, IMHO.

And there is a web archive: http://opensrc.org/pipermail/freepats/

> I will email Lawrence Fritts (University of Iowa) for license
> clarification, to be sure the instruments can be used with GPL.

That would be great if you do so, and they are available.

> Mark told me that very little progress has been made during the years.
> I hope things will start to change from now.

Things are definitely looking up thanks to your efforts.

> Mark, please... tell me that you will get rid of all uncertain (or
> "gray area") samples that are currently in freepats... please... :-)

Well it's only my assumption that some of them MAY have a
slightly dubious history. It would be impossible to work out
which ones might be suspect because they are old and come
from an era when no one bothered with any copyright notice
at all. With the current GUS-compatible freepats, we have
to trust the judgement of Eric A. Welsh who put together
the original set. Also, the set of samples are mediocre and
varied, some at 32khtz and others at 22.5khtz and often too
short, and noisy, to be really useful.

What we need is a large (as possible) range of quality raw
24bit / 96khtz (ideally) samples stored publically in flac
format which anyone can freely download and convert to any
instrument format of which they have the skills to do so.
If the raw samples are GPL then that user is obliged to
provide the "source" of any changes they make *if* they
decide to redistribute the remixed sample set.

This is why I am in favour of a GPL license as opposed to
PD, CC or BSD/MIT licenses. It doesn't bother me if a
commercial business downloads the GPL samples, remixes
and remasters them into another format, and even sells
them, as long as what they redistribute (for sale or not)
is publically available and the license remains intact.

One problem with the GPL is it's "viral" behaviour whereby
anything derived from it is also covered by the GPL. This
is a grey area when it comes to creating content with GPL'd
soundfonts so that is why we came up with a specific
exemption clause to the otherwise GPL license for freepats...

 http://opensrc.org/FreePats

I think Eric A. Welsh came up with this wording...

  As a special exception, if you create a composition which
  uses these patches, and mix these patches or unaltered
  portions of these patches into a composition, these
  patches do not by themselves cause the resulting
  composition to be covered by the GNU General Public
  License. This exception does not however invalidate any
  other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU
  General Public License. If you modify these patches, you
  may extend this exception to your version of the patches,
  but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to
  do so, delete this exception statement from your version.

As far as licensing goes, I am personally in favour of using
the GPL v3 with a similar exemption as the above. That is just
my personal opinion but I feel this is the best approach to
future-proof any samples for the long term and guarantee any
improvements are also publically available... no matter who
or what organization makes those improvements.

Also, the GPL v3 may (I think) prohibit the use of any samples
directly on DRM'd hardware which may mean future proprietary
operating systems on PCs, settops and mobile devices... but
because of the exemption, not the content produced by any
samples or soundfonts. I like the requirement of open source
systems to produce content but anyone can play the produced
content back on any system, however patented, DRM'd or not.

--markc