Bye bye VST2

[ampetrosillo]

Anyway! Once upon a time, reverse-engineered implementations of an API were considered fair game, and in Europe they still are probably, but in the US there is precedent for making such a thing unlawful (and people are up in arms about a specific decision).

What is this precedent and the specific decision that people are up in arms about? Might this be relevant here?

Android is essentially built around a clean room implementation of the Java Virtual Machine. Oracle sued them because they leveraged Java's API without their consent and the court ruled in their favour. I'm not sure whether it was a final ruling (ie. by the Supreme Court) but anyway it's the kind of decision that essentially makes all sorts of things technically unlawful.

[NikkiA]

Android is essentially built around a clean room implementation of the Java Virtual Machine. Oracle sued them because they leveraged Java's API without their consent and the court ruled in their favour. I'm not sure whether it was a final ruling (ie. by the Supreme Court) but anyway it's the kind of decision that essentially makes all sorts of things technically unlawful.

You have it the wrong way around though, the supreme court ruled that Google's use was 'fair use' and APIs can't be copyrighted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LL ... .#Decision

Europe ruled that 'software interfaces cannot be copyrighted' years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Pro ... em#Lawsuit

Steinberg would get nowhere in court.

[ampetrosillo]

Android is essentially built around a clean room implementation of the Java Virtual Machine. Oracle sued them because they leveraged Java's API without their consent and the court ruled in their favour. I'm not sure whether it was a final ruling (ie. by the Supreme Court) but anyway it's the kind of decision that essentially makes all sorts of things technically unlawful.

You have it the wrong way around though, the supreme court ruled that Google's use was 'fair use' and APIs can't be copyrighted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LL ... .#Decision

Europe ruled that 'software interfaces cannot be copyrighted' years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Pro ... em#Lawsuit

Steinberg would get nowhere in court.

Oh, so it went ahead and it was overturned. I'm positive that one of the first decisions was actually in favour of Oracle.

In Europe anyway this would never have been a doubt.

[Urs]

And, as I'm pretty sure our lawyer told me, this has nothing to do with whatever we sign VST SDK license agreements for.

[ampetrosillo]

And, as I'm pretty sure our lawyer told me, this has nothing to do with whatever we sign VST SDK license agreements for.

I suppose what he referred to is that what is stated as a clean room design could be challenged in court as being simply a refactored copy of the original source as available to developers who sign the licence agreements. And that is a harder challenge to defend against.

[wikter]

Things we need:
Adapter to run VST2 as CLAP
Adapter to run DX as CLAP
Adapter to run AAX as CLAP
Adapter to run LV2 as CLAP
Adapter to run Buzz as CLAP

EDIT: ...ok, I need to add something here that is not really clear for some users, at least it wasn't for me. Some CLAP plugs work as VST3 with the same file, is it that way? The same file works both as CLAP AND VST3, and it seems that the same has been achieved with AU. Let's hope Polac does something in that way...

[MitchK1989]

Yup - Wrap your old plugins as clap to use them in modern daws, or wrap your newer clap plugins as vst2 to use them in obsolete daws.

[machinesworking]

The question that's still not clear to me is if upgrades to our DAWs will have to come without VST2 support? I get no one is allowed to make new VST2 plugins, but what happens when Reaper 8 comes out? DP12? Live 13? Sonar whatever?

[ckoe]

It's time to get rid of all VST stuff as soon as possible. I hope every new version of a plugin will have a CLAP install on board. And after a couple of years no one will need steinbergs VST anymore. I think the only DAWs that will stay on VST will be Cubase and Ableton.

[seafire]

Things we need:
Adapter to run VST2 as CLAP

Clap as vst2 is better here, if vst2 releases are to stop

[machinesworking]

It's time to get rid of all VST stuff as soon as possible. I hope every new version of a plugin will have a CLAP install on board. And after a couple of years no one will need steinbergs VST anymore. I think the only DAWs that will stay on VST will be Cubase and Ableton.

You kind of nail the reason it's wishful thinking right there. Cubase will likely always be VST 3 (4,5 etc.) only, Pro Tools will always be AAX only, and Logic AU only. Mostly what needs to happen is every other DAW needs to adopt CLAP, then CLAP becomes the underlying format that gets ported to the other three. Then the CLAP supporting DAWs can develop a solid stable format that ports to the proprietary ones.

Ableton is already on Mac OS one of the half dozen DAWs that supports VS2, 3, and AU. I see no reason they won't support CLAP in the future here, it's just a matter of their slow adoption rate.

[Sascha Franck]

Mostly what needs to happen is every other DAW needs to adopt CLAP, then CLAP becomes the underlying format that gets ported to the other three. Then the CLAP supporting DAWs can develop a solid stable format that ports to the proprietary ones.

This will still take a long time to turn CLAP into any kind of new "standard".
As said before, IMO it'd take one (or better more) of the big plugin companies to go CLAP only.
Ideally, along with that, they'd offer a wrapper for VST/AU/AAX but with a more or less clear notion that "feature XYZ will only be working with our non-wrapped CLAP versions!". That way, users of hosts without native CLAP support might start nagging the responsible developers to add it.
Doesn't read very likely to happen, though, I know.

[machinesworking]

This will still take a long time to turn CLAP into any kind of new "standard".
As said before, IMO it'd take one (or better more) of the big plugin companies to go CLAP only.
Ideally, along with that, they'd offer a wrapper for VST/AU/AAX but with a more or less clear notion that "feature XYZ will only be working with our non-wrapped CLAP versions!". That way, users of hosts without native CLAP support might start nagging the responsible developers to add it.
Doesn't read very likely to happen, though, I know.

I mean that's the best way for it to happen in terms of speed. Unlikely, but the best. The way it will probably happen is that CLAP becomes the plugin standard of choice for developers to code in initially, then all other standards become wrapped versions. The threat of this to a public that doesn't understand makes end users demand the CLAP plugin standard in their DAW, and eventually everyone is using it over VST and AU. Logic, Pro Tools and Cubendo continue to use their proprietary plugin formats. In the mean time Live, DP, Studio One, Sonar etc. eventually drop VST support 10-15 years from now.

Basically unless something changes the way I see it, CLAP is going to be a flavor of plugin in roughly half the DAWs in the next five-seven years, and at some point overtakes AU and VST, but by that time I'll be too old to care.

[rod_zero]

The thing that would push CLAP adoption: if Ableton adopts it, then many plugin developers will follow.

If developers find cheaper to support CLAP and don't deal with VST3 SDK terms they might start abandoning the format at some point: FL Studio, Live, Logic, Protools, Bitwig wont need VST plugins, so Steinberg is going to end isolated, StudioOne could also adopt CLAP.

[jamcat]

So they have abandoned AAX?