Hi all,
I am hoping to sell a musical gadget to childrens' science museums and similar institutions.
Among other things, it uses PD to handle the sequencing of midi for the sound.
I am a bit unclear about the legalities of doing so because of PD's GPL license.
I guess that what I need to do is make it clear in the sale agreement that the PD part is free and that no charge is being made for it.
Because the project will eventually run under windows (currently linux), it would be possible to use Max instead of PD. How do Cycling74 handle that kind of re-sale stuff? They have playback only modules for max don't they? Do people sell Max projects in that form?
I'd rather use PD because it already works just fine, but I want to make a nice easy to sell package for the customer.
The other major component is also gpl, but we negotiated with the author to get a non-gpl distribution of his liraries.
Anyone have some clues about this kind of thing?
Cheers,
Rod
Rodney Berry ATR Media Information Science Laboratories Kyoto Japan rodney@atr.jp http://www.mis.atr.jp/~rodney Ph: +81-774-95-1449 Fax: +81-774-95-1408
rodney wrote:
would be possible to use Max instead of PD. How do Cycling74 handle that kind of re-sale stuff? They have playback only modules for max don't they? Do people sell Max projects in that form?
They have runtime version (which can be downloaded from their site) and you can also export your patch as an executable file, which is actually a runtime together with the patch. This is to sell your stuff and I saw at least some shareware done with it, for instance a vstpluginplayer.
Cheers,
Malte
Hallo, rodney hat gesagt: // rodney wrote:
I am hoping to sell a musical gadget to childrens' science museums and similar institutions.
Among other things, it uses PD to handle the sequencing of midi for the sound.
I am a bit unclear about the legalities of doing so because of PD's GPL license.
Pd is not GPL!! It's released under a BDSish license which basically allows you to relase a binary without providing source code. However some externals are GPL, so this requires you to release source for them and your changes under GPL.
I guess that what I need to do is make it clear in the sale agreement that the PD part is free and that no charge is being made for it.
Because the project will eventually run under windows (currently linux), it would be possible to use Max instead of PD.
Pd is free for all OSes.
How do Cycling74 handle that kind of re-sale stuff? They have playback only modules for max don't they? Do people sell Max projects in that form?
Better ask on max-msp list about this.
I'd rather use PD because it already works just fine, but I want to make a nice easy to sell package for the customer.
Well, you can include all Pd in it, which IMO is even nicer than just distributing a crippled version of Max/MSP.
Ciao
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__
The GNU GPL or the BSD License puts no restrictions on selling the
software as long as you follow the conditions of the licenses. For
BSD, its to include the copyright notice with any distribution, for the
GPL, you are required to distribute the source of derivative works. I
think that Pd patches could remain closed source if you want, but
modifications to the GPL parts would have to be released.
.hc
On Jan 14, 2005, at 9:01 PM, Frank Barknecht wrote:
Hallo, rodney hat gesagt: // rodney wrote:
I am hoping to sell a musical gadget to childrens' science museums and similar institutions.
Among other things, it uses PD to handle the sequencing of midi for
the sound.I am a bit unclear about the legalities of doing so because of PD's
GPL license.Pd is not GPL!! It's released under a BDSish license which basically allows you to relase a binary without providing source code. However some externals are GPL, so this requires you to release source for them and your changes under GPL.
I guess that what I need to do is make it clear in the sale agreement
that the PD part is free and that no charge is being made for it.Because the project will eventually run under windows (currently
linux), it would be possible to use Max instead of PD.Pd is free for all OSes.
How do Cycling74 handle that kind of re-sale stuff? They have playback only modules for max don't they? Do people sell Max projects in that form?
Better ask on max-msp list about this.
I'd rather use PD because it already works just fine, but I want to make a nice easy to sell package for the customer.
Well, you can include all Pd in it, which IMO is even nicer than just distributing a crippled version of Max/MSP.
Ciao
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__
PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management ->
http://iem.at/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pd-list
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of
it."
- Thomas Jefferson
if you only writing patches in Pd without modifying the C sources of Pd and the externals, you can sell without any legal problems. As Frank wrote, if you modify the sources of some GPLed externals (like everything written with the flext library), you have to release the sources. But if you release the sources there are no legal problems with selling your product.
You only have to be aware that people could disassemble the device and get access to the pd patch. Maybe there are not allowed to use it for other purposes, because you have the copyright. But AFAIK there is no way to compile the patch to some unreadable format.
Of course you could use Pd as an audio framework and write most of your stuff as an Pd external, if you're afraid that people can steal your code. Because Pd is under an BSD-style license you are allowed to use closed source externals with it (this would even be possible, if Pd was under the GPL)
rodney wrote:
Hi all,
I am hoping to sell a musical gadget to childrens' science museums and similar institutions.
Among other things, it uses PD to handle the sequencing of midi for the sound.
I am a bit unclear about the legalities of doing so because of PD's GPL license.
I guess that what I need to do is make it clear in the sale agreement that the PD part is free and that no charge is being made for it.
Because the project will eventually run under windows (currently linux), it would be possible to use Max instead of PD. How do Cycling74 handle that kind of re-sale stuff? They have playback only modules for max don't they? Do people sell Max projects in that form?
I'd rather use PD because it already works just fine, but I want to make a nice easy to sell package for the customer.
The other major component is also gpl, but we negotiated with the author to get a non-gpl distribution of his liraries.
Anyone have some clues about this kind of thing?
-
Frank Barknecht -
Hans-Christoph Steiner -
Malte Steiner -
oliver oli -
rodney