[Freepats] Fwd: License information for the instrument samples

[Mark Constable]

On Friday 28 April 2006 03:06, Roberto Gordo Saez wrote:
> I've received a response from Lawrence Fritts (University of Iowa).
> I've asked for more information about the licence, in order to use
> their samples in Freepats.

This is excellent news :-)

> I'm happy... from his response, it looks to 
> me that they can be used. He gives permission, although he mentioned
> no particular license (maybe they are not copyrighted?).

A slightly strange situation. It appears the webpage itself
is the pseudo-license, or the statement on their website.

No explicit copyright notice means they are copyrighted, by
default (since about 1976 I think), by whoever created them.
The statement on their webpage is the "redistribution license"
or usage conditions. If they really don't care then a simple
statement like "These samples contained within this area are
in the Public Domain" would make all the difference... then
we could use them, without potential future argument, within
GPLed soundfonts.. or any packaged system with any license.

> http://theremin.music.uiowa.edu/MIS.html

RMS would not be happy about this as I am sure he would
insist that "it's in writting" before being safe to use.

It's debatable whether these samples could ever become
part of a GPL soundfont set... perhaps they can, but I
can imagine the point could be argued either way.

Nonetheless, they are a fine set of samples and we
desperately need samples.

> Mark, in case you are still using a 56k connection, i can upload flac
> files to some public webspace (saving more than 1 GB).

Hopefully you will have received an email with an FTP URL
that includes upload access details to the freepats site.

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Lawrence Fritts <lawrence-fritts at uiowa.edu>
> Date: Apr 27, 2006 4:36 PM
> Subject: Re: License information for the instrument samples
> To: Roberto Gordo Saez <roberto.gordo at gmail.com>
> 
> 
> Hi Roberto,
> 
> I love being able to say this: the samples may be freely used without
> any restriction whatsoever.
> 
> Have fun with them,
> 
> larry

It may be worth pointing out to Larry that the "having fun
with them" part is somewhat restricted without a clear license
of some sort.

I was going to say maybe we could suggest one but we don't
really have something that is 100% suitable yet. Interesting
point, it's not just freepats that is in need of a license but
other folks too.. folks that probably don't want to think too
hard about the issue.. and would perhaps rather ignore the
issue altogether. I'm not sure if that is the reason in this
particular case but it very well might be.

I've been so busy lately I hardly have time to think about it
myself.

--markc