Open-source VST plugins?

[Pollux]

Do you know of (and maybe even use ) any open-source VST effect or instrument?
Why do you think there is so little free [as in speech] software and so much freeware? Is it because ALL plugin developers who write freeware only do so to plug [no pun intended ] their commercial plugins? Or simply because they don't care giving the users more freedom, and users wouldn't pay attention to that extra freedom anyway?

To me, free software is the freedom to get the plugin to run on any platform I could use now and in the future (possibly hardware solutions like DSPs or FPGAs -- or more simply, think about bugs that could arise in the future like happened with Pentium IV); it's the freedom to tweak both the sound and the GUI to my needs (maybe I want surround sound and it hasn't been implemented? maybe I want to add a "MIDI learn" function that's missing? maybe I like the sound in SimulAnalog's JCM900 and want to simulate other amps?); it's the ability to reuse components and not reinvent the wheel thousands of times (what if I wanted to create my own distortion plugin? I'd have to reimplement yet another supersampling and decimation algorithm... why spend most of the time reimplementing the same old stuff while I could spend this time working on the interesting part, i.e. the actual distortion?) Of course, I'm saying "I", but that could be someone else, which is all the point of open source

I understand that in the music world, many programs are so costly to develop and reach to such a small audience that commercial software is often the only solution if you want something as complete as, say, Nuendo or BFD. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a place for free software, quite the opposite actually. Pooling our efforts thanks to open-source software could greatly help extend an already great freeware offer, while sticking to the "reimplement-from-scratch" freeware model could only slow this process down...

What do y'all think about this?

[farlukar]

Do you know of (and maybe even use ) any open-source VST effect or instrument?

From the top of my head: there's Additive Synth, Juno6, the Bioroid stuff,ZR-3, Zyn

Why do you think there is so little free [as in speech] software and so much freeware? Is it because ALL plugin developers who write freeware only do so to plug [no pun intended ] their commercial plugins? Or simply because they don't care giving the users more freedom, and users wouldn't pay attention to that extra freedom anyway?

I guess the amount of users who want to (and can) modify the code of their instruments is fairly small, and developers don't want to take the risk of some clueless coder screwing up their creations because in the end they'll still be seen as responsible for some buggy version

<snip generic free software speak>
What do y'all think about this?

Well, of course there are advantages, but I think any reason a developer can think of for not releasing his/her code is a valid reason.
But I'm no coder so what do I know

[aciddose]

personally i would release source of my synth, but for fear of someone else ripping the superiour code and not giving me any kind of feedback/credit/anything in return. i personally make my software free because i dont agree at all with how commercial software works. and not only because programming is a hobby for me. the one thing i would hate most is to see someone take opensource code and use it for commercial software, totally ripping off all thier users (most likely) with the exact same software available for free. opensource licences seem good, but in reality commercial developers dont care about them, anyone will rip the code without any consideration.

i believe real open source cannot coexist with a majority of closed source companies.

[tha_man]

Reason 1:
It's hard to make a software crossplatform, especially if you're using non-crossplatform development tools like Delphi or something, not to mention various third-party components. Most freeware developers do this for fun and to make a contribution to the community, not to **** around with various workarounds to make their creation run on zillion of different operating systems. There's a lot of work even when you try to make it work in different VST hosts...

Reason 2:
Farlukar already mentioned this: percentage of musicians that want to change the source of plugins (or even know how to compile the working code) is so small, that there's practically no point to make it open source. And those that know how to program rather make their own creation, not take someone's elses work, even if they can. In *many* cases it's actually much easier to start from the beginning than trying to make sense of someone elses code, not to mention much more fun and satisfactory when the thing finally starts working

Reason 3:
Some developers simply dont want to release the code for others to mess with. It's their creation, and if they want to maintain it themselves, they have every right to do so.

...

I think there are very few people that are using freeware *just* to promote their commercial software. Most of those that make both, started making freeware for fun, and went commercial after they realize they are really good at this, and want to make it their (at least part-time) job. Nothing wrong with this.


Open source is cool when the community is really strong, like with Mozilla suite, Open Office, Linux etc., but it doesn't make much difference on smaller projects, and especially those that are targeted to a relatively small group of people, like musicians.


IMO

[farlukar]

Buy The GIMP & Audacity for only $14.99
[edit] I see they throw in CDex as well. Ain't that grand.

[asseca]

TobyBear has some open source stuff for Delphi programmers...

[tha_man]

farlukar:
That's not much different than selling warezed version of commercial software. Or selling freeware for that matter...

[Rangtangtang]

Source code is the authers creation, its their discovery to do what they will with. Though another could independetly come up whith it. But if the auther wants to develope it just fore development sake they might want to share it. But just sharing the effect, instruments or host should be good enough for most of us, shouldn't it?

[farlukar]

That's not much different than selling warezed version of commercial software. Or selling freeware for that matter...

well...

This license gives you the permission to modify, copy, distribute, and sell Audacity, as long as the code you distribute is available under the GPL.

It is quite possible that this guy has the source on these CDs. Even if it's a bit naughty, it 's probably legal.
An example of one of the drawbacks of releasing your code

[griels]

Reason 1:
It's hard to make a software crossplatform, especially if you're using non-crossplatform development tools like Delphi or something, not to mention various third-party components. Most freeware developers do this for fun and to make a contribution to the community, not to **** around with various workarounds to make their creation run on zillion of different operating systems. There's a lot of work even when you try to make it work in different VST hosts...

The onus is not on the developer to make things crossplatform. But there's a darned sight more possibility of porting an app to another platform with the source code than without (see the Betabugs crossported plugins for example, where the source code was shared with Paul_FX I believe). And with the correct abstractions (using xplatform toolkits such as WxWindows etc) there are inherent rapid application development advantages as well as portability advantages, rather than '****ing around with various workarounds'.

Now, I'm a big fan of Synthedit (Mr Ray 73 and OrganIZED Trio made sure of that), but this is what bugs me about people distributing Synthedit dlls (which is great in many other respects) without the source .se1 and .sep files. Portability seems to be an afterthought. What happens when users finally make the move to 64-bit? Are all these plugins going to recompiled? I think not.

Of course this is much better than nothing, but the availability of the structures contained would allow porting to other formats. And it's no worse than the zillion other software developers providing non-Synthedit freeware plugins with no source code, other than the fact that that source code might run equally well on a foreign platform, whereas it will probably take a lot more effort to port the corresponding Synthedit design. But it does potentially create a platform bias.

This kind of 'futureproofing' concept is probably alien to a lot of musicians. You can't open-source a trumpet solo or a vocal take and reconstruct it years later with a trombone or a hurdy gurdy. But it's a pretty common goal in a lot of software design. Perhaps these design ideals are a little hard to match with the often gung-ho needs of a lot of musicians where bespoke solutions are the order of the day (witness the explosion of proprietary romplers), but they're pretty ingrained in much of the software world. Two worlds collide maybe?

[Ben [KVR]]

There are links to many open source plug-ins in this list:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30071

[NiallM]

Actually, all my more recent plugins are open-source too (Amplitude Imposer, Buffer Synth 2, Cycle Shifter, Tempo Sync Reverser), and cross-platform. To be honest, I was kind of hoping that this would encourage other developers to contribute patches etc. (particularly with BS2), but that doesn't seem to have happened...

It's really not that hard to write cross-platform vst plugins, as the two main APIs (the VST SDK and VSTGUI) are both cross-platform - typically plugins written on Windows (for example) will just require a simple re-compile and some slight tweaking to get them running on OS X. Of course, if you're going to use delphi to write plugins, you are going to limit yourself to Windows (although the Lazarus project looks promising in this regard).

I've actually been thinking that (if I ever get round to creating commercial plugins) I'd create a kind of license where, for the first 5 years or so, the plugin would have a standard commercial-type license (i.e. you're free to use it on your own machine(s), but not re-distribute it etc.). After the 5 years are up though (or if I decide to go out of business, and not support it anymore), it would revert to being licensed under the GPL, and I would make the source code available. That way the customers would be protected from the more unsavoury aspects of proprietary software (what happens if the company goes bust, and you want to use the software on Windows 20X6?), but I would still be able to make money from it. I figure that after 5 years I'm unlikely to still be interested in continuing development on any single plugin, or if I am, I'll have substantially re-written it by that point anyway, so it's not like I'd be losing anything...

- Niall.

[wikter]

(shit... my pc lock each time i access sourceforge...)

Hi NdC, that BufferSynth2 seems reaallyyy a big thing.

I think that publishing source code is really a problem when anyone can take profit of it to create commercial stuff, but let's think about how many freebies would like to get some code, remount/recode it and then release a different free synth that could take advantage of newer CPU code or things like that...

This remembers me that I've got a bunch of connections (well, also called Synthedit ensembles) never released as sources...

[tha_man]

This license gives you the permission to modify, copy, distribute, and sell Audacity, as long as the code you distribute is available under the GPL.

It is quite possible that this guy has the source on these CDs. Even if it's a bit naughty, it 's probably legal.
An example of one of the drawbacks of releasing your code

That's true, although from the content of their page I kind of doubt it, that's why I wrote it's like warez. But if there indeed is source code there, it's really legal, and since all GPL developers should know GPL licencing, I guess they have no problem with this.

[xoxos]

to me, loads and loas of words in big pargraphs indicate my disinterest.

if you're looking for an open-source, vsti plug-in for synthetic speech/singing, i forget whether my shit is called 'syng' or 'synger' (there's an effect v. too) but it's free and the source is up on the se files site somewhere.

forget all that immediately and read the next post.