[Freepats] About licenses

[Roberto Gordo Saez]

I will share my thoughts on the license of sounds.

On 4/7/06, Mark Constable <markc at renta.net> wrote:
> 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.

I agree with you. The usually called "copyleft" feature of GPL can be
very convenient. Some people (Theo de Raadt is a notable example) does
not like this requirement, but it is OK for me.

In fact, as a software developer, I use the GNU GPL almost always for
my own code and I see the copyleft as a good thing.

Maybe, as a egoist human being as I am, I would prefer to always
receive public domain from others, and always publish my own material
as GPL to others. (Heh, yes!!!, that is perfect!)... Fortunately I do
not always (only sometimes) follow my perverse internal voices... :-)

Seriously now, GPL is perfectly OK for me for _software_ works.

> 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...

Yes, it would be a serious practical problem to force all people to
publish under GPL their own compositions. Usually, when someone uses a
computer program to make something (painting, write, compose...), he
does expect the result to be under his copyright and conditions.
Someone may decide to publish a composition but disallow others to
modify it, which I believe it is a perfectly respectable requirement
(thinking of the composition as a piece of art).

A plain GPL license, without the exception, is sufficient for my
purposes; I usually only make music as a personal hobby and do not
publish anything. But others may choose to avoid GPL patches and
prefer to license proprietary ones in order to not being forced to
publish the result under GPL. This would be a bad thing.

Some GNU software (like Bison) make similar exceptions for output files.

> 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.

I agree with this. Now you be wondering why I've suggested PD...

I just can't understand the meaning of GPL clauses when applied to
samples. I've used the GPL many times for my own software, I've made
derivative works of other's GPL code, and distributed GPL software.
All of this even commercially, working as a software engineer for a
company. I've read the GPL many times, and the meaning of every
section is pretty clear to me when applied to software.

OK, probably all of us can, more or less, imagine the "spirit" of GPL
and try to adjust it for the equivalent applied to music. But exact
terms can be hard to correspond. I can't find any sense on some
clauses, while there are others with just too many ways to interpret
them, depending on particular definitions or situations!

Please, note that this is a subjective problem. It seems not to be a
problem for other people, but it is for me. The more I've analyse the
GPL, the more possibilities open and more confusing is it. Well, maybe
I am paranoid (I accept this possibility also) :-)

Compatibility. As a public domain work has no copyright, it can be
combined with other works and re-released with any other license
(GPL2, GPL2+exception, GPL3, BSD/MIT, CC...). There will be no
compatibility problems in the future or in case you latter prefer to
apply other license for whatever reason.

There are compatibility problems with free software licenses very
often. Personally I've been bitten many times by this; sometimes a
chunk of code from one free program can't be mixed with other
(Original BSD, Apache or PHP can not be mixed with GPL software, for
example). A common problem is to link a GPL program with OpenSSL; this
happens by mistake many times.

I would want to avoid this on music. It could be a nightmare.
Sometimes can be difficult to detect: suppose I make a track with a
drum sequencer, which produces output using samples with license A.
Then, I record the sound of a piano using samples under license B.
Latter I mix all tracks with a multi-track audio editor... license A
and license B can be incompatible, even if they both of them are free.

The exception used in freepats should fix this issue, so it is good
for me, BUT...

The exceptions says: "if you create a composition which uses these
patches, [...] these patches do not by themselves cause the resulting
composition to be covered by the GNU General Public License.". For
simplification, I will interpret this words in a way such as the
meaning is equal to the Bison exception, which says: "as a special
exception [...] you may use that output file without restriction.". On
other words, been not covered by GPL means the same that "use without
restriction". I think this is the wanted meaning, but please, correct
me if it is not.

Now, suppose that I'm not much creative (you know, heh? ;-) ) and I
make a simple composition. This composition have some slow parts with
silence and some separate notes from instruments.

Latter, this composition, which is not covered by GPL, is used (by
myself or other people) to extract all isolated samples and make a
non-free soundfont from them. Huh?