Selling VST2 after October 2018: Steinberg agreement

[BlitBit]

Does anybody know who exactly is the licensee with regards to the license agreement? Is it me as a person or rather the company that can be entered on the first line?

I don't have a company but with regards to the SDK I would like to keep all options open, especially because some popular hosts like for example Ableton Live do not even support VST3 yet.

If the license agreement is made between Steinberg and a company then I would have to think about a nice name quickly and then hope that no unexpected problems show up. If the agreement was with me as a person that would give much more flexibility.

[Richard_Synapse]

Generally speaking it should work as follows:

- You enter the contract as a person
- Later on the contract moves from you as a person to your company.

Depending on how this procedure is performed exactly, it may be necessary to contact Steinberg. This is hard to answer though without knowing a lot more details, e.g. your location, and how exactly the transformation process looks like. You will almost certainly need legal advice here, to prevent you from making a mistake.

Richard

[swatwork]

If the agreement was with me as a person that would give much more flexibility.

I applied using my own name rather than a company and I didn't have any problems (got it back signed after a week or so). With this being a 'last chance' offer from Steinberg I wanted to keep my VST2 options open.

[quikquak]

Just got mine (VST2 & VST3) back, signed. Took just over a week.

[ghettosynth]

What is the correct email to send this to?

website says infoATsteinberg.de, is that correct?

[camsr]

This is not quite correct. E.g. I use VST2 SDK from 2006, at that time I had a license to use it which had no explicit expiration time. Steinberg simply can't force anyone to stop using older SDKs, as it was a done deal at the time. The new rules may apply to latest SDK version, but who cares about it... They can stop supporting VST2 plugins in their hosts if they have balls to do it.

I also have a VSTSDK version from around 2005 or so. What does this mean, technically?
I haven't even re-registered on the steinberg dev portal for the VST3 version.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

This is not quite correct. E.g. I use VST2 SDK from 2006, at that time I had a license to use it which had no explicit expiration time. Steinberg simply can't force anyone to stop using older SDKs, as it was a done deal at the time. The new rules may apply to latest SDK version, but who cares about it... They can stop supporting VST2 plugins in their hosts if they have balls to do it.

I also have a VSTSDK version from around 2005 or so. What does this mean, technically?
I haven't even re-registered on the steinberg dev portal for the VST3 version.

If you have a signed VST2 license agreement, nothing should change for you. Otherwise, well, you may lose the right to use it. As far as I understand, Steinberg never made an "offer" like free software usually does with their licenses (e.g. MIT license), Steinberg always expected everyone to sign a license agreement. So, if you do not have a signed paper, you have to worry.

[quikquak]

What is the correct email to send this to?

website says infoATsteinberg.de, is that correct?

Yep, that's what I did and it got fowarded by Technical Support to the right person.

[camsr]

This is not quite correct. E.g. I use VST2 SDK from 2006, at that time I had a license to use it which had no explicit expiration time. Steinberg simply can't force anyone to stop using older SDKs, as it was a done deal at the time. The new rules may apply to latest SDK version, but who cares about it... They can stop supporting VST2 plugins in their hosts if they have balls to do it.

I also have a VSTSDK version from around 2005 or so. What does this mean, technically?
I haven't even re-registered on the steinberg dev portal for the VST3 version.

If you have a signed VST2 license agreement, nothing should change for you. Otherwise, well, you may lose the right to use it. As far as I understand, Steinberg never made an "offer" like free software usually does with their licenses (e.g. MIT license), Steinberg always expected everyone to sign a license agreement. So, if you do not have a signed paper, you have to worry.

I don't remember signing anything from them, just using their website and following the instructions to register. I think I do recall their might have been a form to download and sign and mail to them?

[S0lo]

I can't imagine how many old small developers are sleeping now without knowing about this. They wake up in October and suddenly their business is doomed illegal.

[swatwork]

I can't imagine how many old small developers are sleeping now without knowing about this. They wake up in October and suddenly their business is doomed illegal.

If they don't have a signed license agreement then their business has always been illegal. All that has changed is that from October they won't be able to apply for one to put it right.

[S0lo]

I can't imagine how many old small developers are sleeping now without knowing about this. They wake up in October and suddenly their business is doomed illegal.

If they don't have a signed license agreement then their business has always been illegal. All that has changed is that from October they won't be able to apply for one to put it right.

Even worse

[Guillaume Piolat]

Got mine from the mail, feels nice to be friend with the sheriff

[Dozius]

Anybody ever consider making a clean room copy of the API? I guess the biggest hurdle is that anyone interested in doing it has already looked at the VST SDK. Crowd source some freelancers?

[S0lo]

Anybody ever consider making a clean room copy of the API? I guess the biggest hurdle is that anyone interested in doing it has already looked at the VST SDK. Crowd source some freelancers?

Reminds me of this (Jump to 28:30 or watch on youtube):