| Licensing question [message #64293] |
Tue, 07 February 2006 08:24 |
TCB
Messages: 1261
Registered: July 2007
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Senior Member |
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I posted this to Spectrasonics-users and I'm cross posting it here in case
anyone is interested.
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This is mostly a direct Eric/Spectra question but I thought I would post
it to the list. There is (yet another probably the billionth or so) flame
war in the free software community about the GPL3. I'm a card carrying libertarian
free software zealot--who, as a punishment for crimes committed in a previous
life, make most of my living running Windows servers--so I've been following
it. For a fairly non-geeky synopsis check out this link.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/06/torvalds_gpl_analysi s/
And just in case you think this stuff has nothing to do with you, your websites
probably run Apache, your email mailing lists probably run Mailman, and your
ecommerce shopping cart almost certaily was written using Perl or PHP, all
of which are core free software projects licensed under the GPL or something
very similar. All of us who use the web or email in any mission critical
way are in some way piggybacking on the free software movement, whether we
know it or not.
Now then, I don't agree with everything Linus says in the current argument
about GPL3, and I think he has a history of being as unwilling to consider
philosophical problems as Richard Stallman (the main man behind the FSF)
is unwilling to consider some practical problems, but one thing Linus said
that struck home with me was that in his opnion the place to fight the DRM
war is with content. Once there is lots of good content out there using some
kind of non-restrictive content license, those licenses will gain some traction
in the real world as an alternative to the usual "dupe this CD for your neighbor
and I'll throw your booty in jail" license we see on CDs now.
All of which dovetails with the fact that I'm planning on releasing some
new music of my own in the fairly near future. I was going to just copyright
it and send it out into the wild via BitTorrent because I've long since given
up on making any money from my music. However, I decided that maybe I could
use this as a way to get some other people to think about these issues by
using a free content license. Those licenses work much like the GPL works
for software, it grants the user the right to listen, copy, and redistribute
as they wish. Some deny commercial use, some don't. Some grant the right
of users to modify the work some don't, and so on.
I'm planning on using a license that does not allow commercial use, and does
allow others to modify the work with the condition that they allow similar
modifications on their derivative work. So my Eric/Spectra question is that
I assume if I'm allowed to sell a song I make with Atmosphere I'm also allowed
to give it away. On the other extreme I assume I'm not allowed to let other
people re-use a bare RMX beat. However, how about a pad I make with an Atmosphere
patch? Or a beat I program using one Spectra shaker sample and the rest from
my own sample library?
I realize I'm asking pretty obscure questions, but one of the reasons I'm
doing this is to specifically "get the licensing right," and that means both
making my decisions about how I license my material _and_ respecting the
licenses I agreed to by using Spectra (and other) products. Since I think
Eric and Co. are especially aware of these sorts of things I thought I would
ask for some guidance here.
Thanks,
TCB
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