New commercial software announcement from Cycling’74 - RNBO
Supposedly makes it real easy to build Rack modules
I will be checking out a demo for sure.
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I needed to find this…
…to understand what RNBO is
Must admit as an Ableton owner I’ve had the Max full upgrade from M4L in my basket more than once but never bit the bullet. This may tip me over the edge.
Build guitar pedals, Eurorack modules and much more with Raspberry Pi export
that is very cool
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My last big VR project before coming to VCV development was done in Max/MSP and a previous port of Meander was done in Max For Live (M4L). My vision robotics code for VR was in Max/MSP with an Arduino.
It’s all pretty cool.
I think I’ll pass on RNBO for now - this is in the exported code. (mbo-export/rnbo_source.cpp)
/*******************************************************************************************************************
Cycling '74 License for Max-Generated Code for Export
Copyright (c) 2022 Cycling '74
The code that Max generates automatically and that end users are capable of exporting and using, and any
associated documentation files (the “Software”) is a work of authorship for which Cycling '74 is the author
and owner for copyright purposes. A license is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of the Software (“Licensee”) to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, and distribute copies of the Software,
and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The Software is licensed to Licensee only for non-commercial use. Users who wish to make commercial use of the
Software must contact the copyright owner to determine if a license for commercial use is available, and the
terms and conditions for same, which may include fees or royalties. For commercial use, please send inquiries
to licensing@cycling74.com. The determination of whether a use is commercial use or non-commercial use is based
upon the use, not the user. The Software may be used by individuals, institutions, governments, corporations, or
other business whether for-profit or non-profit so long as the use itself is not a commercialization of the
materials or a use that generates or is intended to generate income, revenue, sales or profit.
The above copyright notice and this license shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF
CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
*******************************************************************************************************************/
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Wow, so not only do you have to get an additional subscription to make use of rnbo … the code you create with it is subsequently not even owned by you?
Edited for clarity 
The Software may be used by individuals … for-profit … so long as the use itself is not … a use that generates or is intended to generate … profit.
I don’t understand this contradiction.
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The “for-profit” bit is describing the type of entity; the entity can be for-profit or non-profit. It’s not referring to the use. So, the first part of the sentence is essentially saying that the software may be used by anyone, irrespective of the entity’s purpose. It then describes the allowed usage, i.e. it can’t be used commercially.
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What are the terms of the license for commercial usage?
If you are an entity with under $200k in annual revenue or funding, you pay nothing for commercial use of the RNBO exported code. If you are using RNBO exported code for commercial purposes, please contact us at licensing@cycling74.com about licenses for commercial use.
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The licensing terms of the generated code are identical to Gen according to https://support.cycling74.com/hc/en-us/articles/10730637742483-RNBO-Export-Licensing-FAQ#link-5
So I believe you are correct - but this isn’t anything new. The source code generated by Gen is not owned by the user either for copyright purposes (but that does not extend to any original algorithms the code is implementing).
Personally I just find this really odd. If you want to make a commercial VST3 (using their JUCE wrapper) you need to get additional licenses from Cycling’74, JUCE and Steinberg. Even if your project is open source!
With hvcc there are no such restrictions. Good thing I removed max support recently :#
there is a trick to this for gen though, you can go back to 7.3.1 (a version along those, forgot which exact one now) which exports code in a MIT/ISC-compatible license. this way you actually own your exported code.
the generated license is as shown here DPF-Max-Gen/gen_exported.h at master · DISTRHO/DPF-Max-Gen · GitHub
It is actually quite bad for opensource devs.
- RNBO generated files have a license that is incompatible with GPL (you can’t put commercial restrictions on top of GPL and still call it GPL)
- JUCE opensource option uses GPLv3+
this locks out any actual opensource use of RNBO stuff, requiring devs to aquire an indie JUCE license if they want to make plugins.
maybe I should go do a DPF based wrapper for this too… to not be bound by GPL alike JUCE
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Yeah, the JUCE license seems strange as well. I don’t like those kinds of licenses at all. Either make it fully open source, or completely closed with a possible tryb4buy option. Or large open core like Rack, I do think that works as well. But this business with putting restrictions on peoples creative output from a piece of software is just really offputting, strange, and leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
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The copyright for both rnbo and gen c/c++ output is still with Cycling’74, only the max algorithm copyright is owned by the user.
Your DPF-Max-Gen wrapper is lgpl, so just the wrapper code needs to be foss, but can be linked to the max-gen stuff. Right?
I really don’t like that you pay a license fee to use rnbo, but then you don’t get to own the result of your work.
BTW: if anyone is interested in working on the pd/heavy-to-vcv wrapper let me know, I had started some basic trials (branches are in my fork: of heavy/hvcc: GitHub - Wasted-Audio/hvcc: The heavy hvcc compiler for Pure Data patches. Updated to python3 and additional generators )
With heavy the c/c++ code links to a BSD internal library and this result can be licensed however the dev pleases. For “daw plugins” we use DPF so the whole result is “clean” from a toolchain perspective (imo).
license is the same as dpf, so the max-gen dpf stuff can be used for commercial or proprietary products as much as you want.
License says LGPL-3.0: GitHub - DISTRHO/DPF-Max-Gen: DPF with Max Gen
Not anymore!
PS: good catch, I pushed it many years ago and never noticed. if you see the code it is all ISC licensed, the wrong license was in there by mistake. sorry for derailing the thread
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