GPL3 licensed plugins can be used with closed source VCV Rack?

[LarsBjerregaard]

@Vortico

When confused about software licensing, ask yourself questions of the form “Does person/company X violate software X’s license by doing Z?”

I agree.

@Vortico

It’s funny to me how many people say “Loading a GPL plugin in nonfree software violates the GPL!”

I think that’s understandable, when we’re talking about a work that is distributed, which we mostly are, since this is the view that, in my understanding, the FSF very much promotes.

@Vortico

Is it the DAW company? No, the DAW isn’t a derivative work of the plugin, so the plugin’s license can’t possibly cover it

Again, to my understanding, this is very much the view that GNU and the FSF promotes, and why people regard GPL as an “infectuous license”. The idea is that “the combined work”, plugin+DAW, using dynamic linking, becomes subject to the GPL, alternatively that you can’t use the GPL for it. The GPL is used to spread “Freedom”.

@Vortico

Now, the point of the GPL is to prevent someone from taking your code and then distributing it under a different (e.g. nonfree) license.

The point of the GPL from it’s creators, is explicitely to convert the world to Free Software. This is the main reason that big companies (Google, Apple, …) go to great lengths to not have GPL software in their products or codebases, as far as possible, because they have a different business model, which is very much not about converting the world to free software, and they want no risk what so ever, of the GPL (and lawyers) infecting their software products.

@Vortico

That’s why those two licenses are said to be “incompatible”

From the point of view of GNU and FSF, they are incompatible when the combined works (also talking dynamic linking) gives the user fewer freedoms and rights than the GPL, which in their view many other licenses do, since they provide the user with less rights and freedoms.

Just to make clear, I’m not a big fan of the views and interpretations of the FSF, but there’s a big Free Software and even Stallmann cult that promotes those, as well as other interpretations of how things work, and that is why confusion (difference of opinion) spreads. Actually I hate “software lawyering” so I think I’ll just shut up about it now

[paul]

@LarsBjerregaard

Again, to my understanding, this is very much the view that GNU and the FSF promotes, and why people regard GPL as an “infectuous license”. The idea is that “the combined work”, plugin+DAW, using dynamic linking, becomes subject to the GPL, alternatively that you can’t use the GPL for it.

This is a major issue with the text the FSF has used to document/describe the GPL. Their conception of “plugins” (aka dynamically linked shared libraries) is overwhelming dominated by the idea of an API that is closely coupled with a single application. For example, imagine a way to write plugins as a 3rd party that could only be loaded by a single DAW. In this case, the FSF’s description of the plugin as a derivative work of the host is accurate.

But audio plugins (VST/LV2/AU/etc.etc) don’t work this way at all. The APIs are not tied to specific hosts, and neither are the plugins. Any given plugin can be loaded into (essentially) any host, implying that neither can possibly be a derivative of the other.

Some years ago I tried to get FSF Europe to work on this problem in their documents that “surround” the GPL, but to no avail.

[chaircrusher]

I know that @Vortico has done due diligence with a lawyer about licensing issue via a via Rack.

So I - without really understanding it all - will not worry about the things he says not to worry about.

The thing about FSF is that Stallman had quixotic, absolutist ideas about free software that were challenging to adapt to to the real world. They are polemicists, not your legal advisors.

He’s also kinda cancelled these days, though I guess he’s back on the FSF. But the less said about that the better.