Steinberg Discontinuing VST2 Support in its products

[S0lo]

until SB started getting all legal with it, VST2 worked fine. Some might argue better.

I for one have a plugin that can send MIDI to DAW. In VST2 it is as simple as calling sendVstEventsToHost(). Works all the time. Even works with SysEx. Which is a whole lot more complicated matter if you know how SysEx works. (ie. you'll have to buffer a dump).

In VST3, there doesn't seem to be a straight way to do everything. You can send notes ON/OFF with IEventList and there is also this LegacyMIDICCOutEvent, but then thats only for CC ? What about all the other MIDI event types? Pitch bend? MTC ? Song position? RPN/NRPN? etc...

[syntonica]

until SB started getting all legal with it, VST2 worked fine. Some might argue better.

I for one have a plugin that can send MIDI to DAW. In VST2 it is as simple as calling sendVstEventsToHost(). Works all the time. Even works with SysEx. Which is a whole lot more complicated matter if you know how SysEx works. (ie. you'll have to buffer a dump).

In VST3, there doesn't seem to be a straight way to do everything. You can send notes ON/OFF with IEventList and there is also this LegacyMIDICCOutEvent, but then thats only for CC ? What about all the other MIDI event types? Pitch bend? MTC ? Song position? RPN/NRPN? etc...

Just the fact the call has "Legacy" in it's name tells me everything I need to know. I'm not sure why note on/offs are segregated from CC data and the rest are ignored. MIDI was designed as soup, not separate courses, all incidentally in the same format. It makes creating a something like a hardware patch editor plugin nigh impossible.

[Super Piano Hater 64]

Do you have any sources for those anecdotes?

Regarding legal threats against open source projects, I had to go digging. Here's a quote from a post in one of the CLAP threads:

And yes, Steinberg tried to get rid of the vestige header too. Most of us using it told them to f**k off, or just ignored them. They have no legal right to do so, and they know it. It didn't stop them from searching github for it and contacting lots of people claimng that they had some sort of rights over it.

As for the websites: VST4free is now Plugins4free. VST Museum was taken down a couple weeks ago. VST Planet went down last year, and you can see for yourself with a "whois" request that the domain name has changed hands and points to Steinberg's nameservers. (If you visit it, it redirects to Steinberg's home page.)

[noizejoy]

They have already begun making legal threats against open source projects compatible with VST2 (even if they don't use any of Steinberg's code) and they've successfully taken down a bunch of VST news and hosting websites.

Do you have any sources for those anecdotes?

- I can confirm that Steinberg did send a massive number of DMCA takedowns to open source (freeware) projects containing the VST2 SDK in the past.
Further proof:
https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/mas ... einberg.md

Aren't those DMCA takedowns related to re-posting the actual VST2 SDK? If yes, that would seem quite legitimate.

- VST is a trademark.
https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/m ... &CURSOR=12

yes, and? -- Linux is also a trademark.

- when you enter vstplanet.com to your webbrowser you get routed to https://www.steinberg.net/
VSTplanet was an independent website containing lots of VST2 freeware plugins.

without any further context and history, what is the point you're trying to make?

- Steinberg tries to force the developers to use the VST3 SDK, but the developers don't like it. Mainly because it is bloated and lacks with important features like proper Midi support. The developer forum on KVR is full of complains. That's the main reason why after more than a decade it still has not properly replaced VST2, especially for synthesizers.

that's fair enough, but unrelated to the question in my post

- Steinberg has been bought by Pinnacle, then by Yamaha. Yamaha Corporation is on the stock market. Such corporates usually are maximizing profit (WKN: 855314 / ISIN: JP3942600002)

... also entirely unrelated to the question in my post

[Super Piano Hater 64]

Aren't those DMCA takedowns related to re-posting the actual VST2 SDK? If yes, that would seem quite legitimate.

As far as I can see, yes, they are. Steinberg has legal authority to do that. My statement, however, was about the open source Vestige and FST projects. These are API-compatible with VST2 but were implemented by way of clean-room reverse engineering, which has a long history as a legal technique for cloning copyrighted software. There's case law from the 80s protecting its legitimacy.

[noizejoy]

Do you have any sources for those anecdotes?

Regarding legal threats against open source projects, I had to go digging. Here's a quote from a post in one of the CLAP threads:

And yes, Steinberg tried to get rid of the vestige header too. Most of us using it told them to f**k off, or just ignored them. They have no legal right to do so, and they know it. It didn't stop them from searching github for it and contacting lots of people claimng that they had some sort of rights over it.

Pretty fuzzy, secondhand, hand wavey, hearsay without detailed context.

As for the websites: VST4free is now Plugins4free. VST Museum was taken down a couple weeks ago. VST Planet went down last year, and you can see for yourself with a "whois" request that the domain name has changed hands and points to Steinberg's nameservers. (If you visit it, it redirects to Steinberg's home page.)

All of those seem to be trademark violation and protection related.

If you use somebody else's trademark in your own branding you're pretty much asking for trouble.

Just ask CentOS, AlmaLinux, RockyLinux about the effort they went through to ensure Red Hat branding was removed from their derivatives. And that is GPL code, which VST to the best of my knowledge never was.

I get it, that some developers (especially of instrument plugins) are quite angry and find VST3 a big step backwards for instrument plugins. And those complaints may have considerable merit. -- I couldn't argue either way, since I'm not a plugin developer.

But if you're trying to create a VST compatible platform, you have to stay clear of trademark and copyright violations. This is well known to people who create serious clean room reverse engineered compatible platforms and tools.

As far as I can tell, Steinberg is merely doing kind of the same thing as Apple and Avid. Deleted for being potentially misunderstood or misleading: Except they're actually allowing GPL compatible use for VST3.

So all the complaining about trademarks and copyrights seem to miss the mark for me. Why hold Steinberg to a higher standard than Avid or Apple?

Keep the discussion to the technical merits and/or develop something clean-room compatible. Or participate in the CLAP project or LV2 or whatever.

All that being said, Steinberg most certainly didn't win the heart and minds of many instrument plugin developers with the VST3 transition. And that's on them.

[noizejoy]

Aren't those DMCA takedowns related to re-posting the actual VST2 SDK? If yes, that would seem quite legitimate.

As far as I can see, yes, they are. Steinberg has legal authority to do that. My statement, however, was about the open source Vestige and FST projects. These are API-compatible with VST2 but were implemented by way of clean-room reverse engineering, which has a long history as a legal technique for cloning copyrighted software. There's case law from the 80s protecting its legitimacy.

You've intermingled rightful trademark protection and copyright issues with a potentially valid complaint about a (futile?) legal bullying attempt by Steinberg to interfere with legitimate clean-room reverse engineering efforts. -- However, you have not (yet) shown evidence for the latter. If that evidence exists, it should be shown. Otherwise this accusation lacks credibility and thus backfires in seeking the high ground in the discussion.

This kind of intermingling hurts a potentially valid argument.

[Urs]

nvm, not interested in the discussion. Pointless.

[noizejoy]

nvm, not interested in the discussion. Pointless.

I caught your original comment and amended my post to strike the potentially misleading sentence.

[Music Engineer]

Why hold Steinberg to a higher standard than Avid or Apple?

i think, being held to a higher standard is something to be proud of. the reason for this higher standard is, of course, that vst has managed to become the de facto industry standard whereas au and aax are more like vendor specific formats. well, ok - au much less so than aax because with au, the vendor happens to be a major computer hardware and OS manufacturer - but still. i expect that in a few years (maybe ten), vst3 may occupy a similar status as aax does today. as someone else said: you can't have it both ways: try to be an interoperable industry standard while at the same time being proprietary with strong licensing limitations. one has to pick one of those things. steinberg seems to be picking the latter

[stargate]

I wish the CLAP format all of the success in the world, but the odds are stacked against them. It's going to be almost impossible for them to get the critical mass of hosts and plugins required to succeed. Because VST(tm) is that name brand that consumers demand, with more inertia than a runaway train. Also, being "open source" only means that anybody can implement a CLAP host or plugin without unreasonable restrictions, the standard is still controlled by somebody who can completely screw it up (now or later), or hand control over to somebody else who will.

What they need is a broad coalition of major plugin and host vendors to come together and agree on a standard, governance, and most importantly, all agree to implement it. If Ableton, Bitwig, FL Studio, Xfer and some other plugin vendors not in bed with Steinberg joined forces to promote CLAP, then it will almost certainly become a thing.

The vast majority of users won't consider using something without VST support (please, ask me how I know that), and there is no clear path for CLAP to become so dominant that it replaces VST. Which leaves host developers with gambling on a huge burden of providing support for yet another plugin format, while still supporting VST in parallel for many years.

[Teksonik]

What they need is a broad coalition of major plugin and host vendors to come together and agree on a standard, governance, and most importantly, all agree to implement it.

The music production software world needs something like the MIDI Manufacturers Association:

"The MIDI Manufacturers Association was officially established as a nonprofit in 1985 with the goal to expand, promote, and protect MIDI technology for the benefit of artists and musicians around the world".

A similar organization would benefit both software developers and end users alike especially if there is going to be a new format.

[noizejoy]

Why hold Steinberg to a higher standard than Avid or Apple?

i think, being held to a higher standard is something to be proud of. the reason for this higher standard is, of course, that vst has managed to become the de facto industry standard whereas au and aax are more like vendor specific formats. well, ok - au much less so than aax because with au, the vendor happens to be a major computer hardware and OS manufacturer - but still. i expect that in a few years (maybe ten), vst3 may occupy a similar status as aax does today. as someone else said: you can't have it both ways: try to be an interoperable industry standard while at the same time being proprietary with strong licensing limitations. one has to pick one of those. steinberg seems to be picking the latter

Agree very much with you.

I think discussing this topic in terms of loss of good will and loss of technical merit would be more relevant and even potentially fruitful angles than complaining about legal issues like trademarks and copyrights.

As a longtime Steinberg user, their approach on this topic makes my relationship with them more transactional and less driven by my past strategic emotional desire to support a generally more industry benevolent company. And that’s kind of sad.

[Super Piano Hater 64]

Keep the discussion to the technical merits and/or develop something clean-room compatible. Or participate in the CLAP project or LV2 or whatever.

It's certainly true that proactive trademark territoriality is a classic pastime of giant corporations where lawyers get bored. In normal circumstances, I would probably take this as another case of a big company doing the usual, and not comment on it at all. The number of moves they've made, and their choice of targets, could easily be a coincidence.

But let's back up here. You were critiquing a particular passage in my earlier post. I thought I made it clear how much of that passage was my opinion, with phrasing like "I expect" and "I think." My less-than-generous interpretation of the events I mentioned is rooted in other context that you didn't ask me to elaborate on, presumably because I didn't mention it in that particular post, because we've already discussed it in this thread. Perhaps it was unfair of me to assume you would read those other posts. Anyway, let's review that, and then see if you still feel that I should stick to criticisms on purely technical merit.

Last March, Steinberg added a clause to the VST3 license agreement. I'll refer to a post from the Steinberg forums:

I’ve read the new VST 3 License Agreement version 2.1 of 30 March 2021 and am very worried about clause 9.7:

“Any and all prior VST 2 and/or VST 3 Plug-In SDK Agreements between Steinberg and the Licensee
shall be automatically terminated by signing this Agreement.”

Does that mean that if i want to add VST 3 support to my DAW MuLab that i have to kill support for VST 2 plugins?

The response from a Steinberg employee (one who, as you can see, is in contact with their lawyers) was as follows:

We will change the formulation in order to make it clearer.
This §9.7 does not apply to Host which already supports VST2, in this case your last signed VST2 license agreement is still valid.
For plugins developer we will add a transition period.

They did indeed "change the formulation" in a subsequent update to the license agreement. Specifically, they changed it by simply removing it. But look closely. They clearly intended to enforce this against plugin developers, and "a transition period" implies they fully expected to enforce it later.

We can hope that they change their minds, or already have. But their actions and statements demonstrate several things: That they're aware they have the ability to do this; that they decided they would do it; that they ran it by their lawyer to put it into motion; and that their stated reason for agreeing to a change of plans was that the extent of the clause's enforcement could be "clearer."

It is very difficult for me to take this as anything but an existential threat to all VST2 plugins, and it has nothing to do with the technical merits of VST3. That is the main reason for my opinion of Steinberg. The rest is window dressing.

[noizejoy]

Keep the discussion to the technical merits and/or develop something clean-room compatible. Or participate in the CLAP project or LV2 or whatever.

It's certainly true that proactive trademark territoriality is a classic pastime of giant corporations where lawyers get bored. In normal circumstances, I would probably take this as another case of a big company doing the usual, and not comment on it at all. The number of moves they've made, and their choice of targets, could easily be a coincidence.

But let's back up here. You were critiquing a particular passage in my earlier post. I thought I made it clear how much of that passage was my opinion, with phrasing like "I expect" and "I think." My less-than-generous interpretation of the events I mentioned is rooted in other context that you didn't ask me to elaborate on, presumably because I didn't mention it in that particular post, because we've already discussed it in this thread. Perhaps it was unfair of me to assume you would read those other posts. Anyway, let's review that, and then see if you still feel that I should stick to criticisms on purely technical merit.

Last March, Steinberg added a clause to the VST3 license agreement. I'll refer to a post from the Steinberg forums:

I’ve read the new VST 3 License Agreement version 2.1 of 30 March 2021 and am very worried about clause 9.7:

“Any and all prior VST 2 and/or VST 3 Plug-In SDK Agreements between Steinberg and the Licensee
shall be automatically terminated by signing this Agreement.”

Does that mean that if i want to add VST 3 support to my DAW MuLab that i have to kill support for VST 2 plugins?

The response from a Steinberg employee (one who, as you can see, is in contact with their lawyers) was as follows:

We will change the formulation in order to make it clearer.
This §9.7 does not apply to Host which already supports VST2, in this case your last signed VST2 license agreement is still valid.
For plugins developer we will add a transition period.

They did indeed "change the formulation" in a subsequent update to the license agreement. Specifically, they changed it by simply removing it. But look closely. They clearly intended to enforce this against plugin developers, and "a transition period" implies they fully expected to enforce it later.

We can hope that they change their minds, or already have. But their actions and statements demonstrate several things: That they're aware they have the ability to do this; that they decided they would do it; that they ran it by their lawyer to put it into motion; and that their stated reason for agreeing to a change of plans was that the extent of the clause's enforcement could be "clearer."

It is very difficult for me to take this as anything but an existential threat to all VST2 plugins, and it has nothing to do with the technical merits of VST3. That is the main reason for my opinion of Steinberg. The rest is window dressing.

Thanks for your eloquent and thorough reply.

My response was only to the items in that specific post and I didn't disagree with some of the prior posts (which I had read). Some of those things don't look good and seem to be legitimate issues.

But I honestly think that some of the trademark and copyright discussion dilutes the imho valid criticisms of Steinberg. If you put someone else's trademark in your website name and/or post copies of copyrighted code into your public git repository, that's not particularly endearing to me either. So why even go down the road of that discussion?

I'd prefer, if the calling out of bad behavior stays more focused and less cluttered with instances where some legal hostilities may actually be warranted.

Not everyone at Steinberg has a lousy attitude and not every VST2 developer on Github is an angel.

Also, I've worked for enough companies, where I had to call off our own lawyers, because they - like most lawyers - are trained to think in adversarial terms. (A byproduct of the very design of many of our legal systems). This happens all the time, and I've been around long enough, that this kind of thing even happens with well intended negotiating partners. I just don't read too much hostile intent into first wordings and I don't get all emotional about it. I do push back on it, though. And the reaction to the pushback tells me what I need to know about the intent of my negotiating partner, much more so than the original wording.

So what's described as a bad attitude in a the §9.7 discussion could also be seen as someone in senior management calling off their own lawyers, once the issue came to their attention and discussion. I don't know one way or another, but in cases where there's a good explanation and a bad one, I generally try to avoid the most negative conclusion. It makes relationships work better.

Again, I would encourage to remain focused on the core discussion and not get side-tracked too widely on implied attitude or the assumed boredom of legal departments.
{Side note: At least in some of the jurisdictions I've done business in, not enforcing your trademark, looses you the trademark. So there's also that.}

Staying on message is a thing in a fight for hearts and minds. Those of your allies as well as your counterparty.

P.S.: Thanks for your nuanced reply - much appreciation and respect!