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A Host For Native Linux VST Plugins ? (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips looks
at VST plugins. "Fully functional support for the VST plugin standard is
one of the most important remaining problems for the Linux audio world. VST
plugins are ubiquitous in the Win/Mac audio worlds, they are employed
extensively in professional and desktop music software, and it may be no
exaggeration to claim that the VST standard has revolutionized
computer-based creation of music and sound. Given its great popularity this
writer believes that stable VST support would give Windows users a
compelling reason to try Linux as an alternate or replacement platform,
especially if they have a sizeable investment of money and experience in
their collection of VST plugins."
(Log in to post comments)
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 1, 2007 17:53 UTC (Thu) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] The greater problem is the license for the VST SDK, particularly this section:"2. The Licensee has no permission to sell, licence, give-away and/or distribute the VST PlugIn Interface technology or parts of it in anyway, on any medium, including the Internet, to any other person, including sub-licensors of the Licensee or companies where the Licensee has any involvement. This includes re-working this specification, or reverse-engineering any products based upon this specification."That passage expressly forbids the free distribution of the SDK source code, excluding it from agreement with the terms of the GPL, nor can Linux-specific improvements be added to the official codebase. What is the obstacle to simply re-implementing the SDK independently from the specification, just as Wine is re-implemented from the Windows docs? The only serious obstacle would be if this were somehow barred by some patent, but I can't find any evidence of this (searching for "patent site:steinberg.net" turns up no hits).
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 1, 2007 18:00 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] The issue is whether you can obtain the specification without accepting the license (which forbids reverse engineering). IANAL, so I don't know.
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 1, 2007 18:15 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Even that doesn't really bar cleanroom approaches, but they're more hassly.
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 2, 2007 12:53 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I have serious doubts that EULAS like that are even legally binding.
Seriously reverse engineering should be a protected right. Even beyond any notion of fair use, far beyond just software. It's everywere. Without reverse engineering the entire freaking country would grind to a halt.
Lots of these very big corporatiosn got their start by reverse engineering. Adobe for instance, but I bet they bar reverse engineering in their own products.. the hypocrites.
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 2, 2007 20:49 UTC (Fri) by xtifr (subscriber, #143) [Link] I am not a lawyer (and definitely not an expert on International Law), but I have heard that reverse engineering for compatibility is protected by law in Europe, but the situation is not so clear in the US. Europe (for all that USians tend to dismiss them as a bunch of "socialists") still seems to understand that free markets are about competition, while the US seems to think that having a bunch of big companies is enough. So we in the US may have to wait for the Europeans to ride in and save the day, just as they had to with crypto (and as we're hoping they'll continue to do with patents).
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 3, 2007 4:53 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] (for all that USians tend to dismiss them as a bunch of "socialists")
It's a important distinction you need to make here.
When it comes to freedom governments, in general, are obstacles of freedom, not friends of freedom.
For instance if they pass a law saying your allowed to "reverse engineer for compatability" that sounds like a good thing, but it pretty much makes "reverse engineer for learning and to create a competiting program" is illegal.
What a government should more properly do is simply ignore all of it and let people do what they want. It's tempting to say "Oh I want a government to protect rights", but if it wasn't for the government then there would be no need to protect those rights in the first place. They usually protect rights by putting limitations and compartmentalizing them,
(In my mind the major role in publicly owned government is to regulate trade, provide for a common defense (aka military), and in modern times to prevent mega-corporations from becoming governments themselves)
What is required in reverse engineering is that if 'Company A' makes a software project or hardware product then 'Company B' can reverse engineer it and make a better product and put 'Company A' out of business. To me this is right and proper.
A major example of this is Compaq reverse engineering the IBM PC BIOS to make PC clones. This laid the fundamental ground work for commodizing and 'democratizing' PC hardware so that now everybody and their mom can afford to own fast, cheap, and relatively reliable hardware.
Now in the US in order to make it possible to profit from innovation without fearing somebody 'stealing' your ideas then Patents were created.
I don't have a problem with patents in general even though Patents are definately socialist in nature, but they don't work with everything. The biggest example is, of course, software were you have it 'protected' by trade secrets + copyright + patent law. It's a legal nightmare.
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 5, 2007 21:15 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Oppression can only come from governments?
reimplement the SDK? Posted Mar 8, 2007 4:25 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] No.
But that's what one of the few things that governments are very very good at.
hassly? Posted Mar 2, 2007 23:14 UTC (Fri) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Hassly? Not troubly, botherly or hindrancely? I love it. It's quite laughy. :)
hassly? Posted Mar 5, 2007 21:21 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] It's located in the regular-use part of my personal lexicon, but you're welcome to it.
Personally I don't like the sound of some of your off-the-cuff entries, which is the rule of thumb I usually apply to neologisms, and I suspect the population at large does too over time. Aside from beging established, troublesome and bothersome have a nice sound; laughable is a bit formal but works. I like hindrancely for its self referential feel though.
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