Cherry Audio going NFR...

[jamcat]

Good for Cherry Audio.

All software developers need to vigorously defend their intellectual property rights, or risk losing them.

[D-Fusion]

Is it possible that a lot of noise against Cherry NFR policy come from guys who use to sell freebie licenses (eg CA2600) in the second hand market?

I got one of those freebies when i bought something and Choose to give it away for free since i already had it and selling it for Pocket Money is just pure greed and if this continues it will be the end of freebies in the near future.

The prices for the Cherry Audio Plugins are so low that i have seen them as NFR since the beginning.

[sin night]

How many of them can be converted into paying customers is completely different subject, though! Yet, the issue does exist unfortunately...

By stopping license transfers? It'll convert *0* users, absolutely none, why would it? It won't even make it harder for the crackers.

I didn’t refer to NFR in my post (maybe my post wasn’t clear), it was about how much the size of the problem vs how much of them can be turned into customers.


Anyway, NFR is not effective for that goal in my opinion, it’s about maximizing the income by getting money that otherwise would be second-hand sales and avoiding everything to handle those sales (and maybe also cutting down second hand sales scams… you can’t be scammed with stolen licenses and such, when you can only buy directly and from official authorized resellers); but that was not my point.

[martinjuenke]

[lotus2035]

I've been trying to buy a Mercury 4 license from someone in the marketplace but they won't check their inbox.
Yeah so if anyone feels like donating a license out of anger I'm here to support you.

[jamcat]

In 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling that clarified the legality of transferring software licenses within the EU. The ruling stated that the exhaustion of distribution rights applies in cases of software license transfer, meaning that if a copy of a software program is first sold in the EU by the holder of the rights or with his consent, the rights over that copy of the software are exhausted and its distribution cannot be prohibited anymore. This includes licenses that are granted for an unlimited time and for a one-time license fee, which are regarded as equivalent to a "sale." However, there are some limitations to the transfer of licenses, including that partial transfers are not allowed, and the original licensee cannot continue to use the software himself.

This is a primary reason so many software companies have been switching to a subscription model. Thank the CJEU for that. A bunch of "judges" who don't even understand the basic concept of a limited use license under contract law.

[sin night]

In 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling that clarified the legality of transferring software licenses within the EU. The ruling stated that the exhaustion of distribution rights applies in cases of software license transfer, meaning that if a copy of a software program is first sold in the EU by the holder of the rights or with his consent, the rights over that copy of the software are exhausted and its distribution cannot be prohibited anymore. This includes licenses that are granted for an unlimited time and for a one-time license fee, which are regarded as equivalent to a "sale." However, there are some limitations to the transfer of licenses, including that partial transfers are not allowed, and the original licensee cannot continue to use the software himself.

This is a primary reason so many software companies have been switching to a subscription model. Thank the CJEU for that. A bunch of "judges" who don't even understand the basic concept of a limited use license under contract law.

I disagree on this point… for example, Adobe announced the subscription plans in 2011. And by 2012/2013, “cloud” was already a huge buzzword (I remember it well because I was completing my studies at the time and my final assignment had to deal with that…); companies were already pushing towards SAS (sofware as service) models. For example Google Cloud started in 2008 (about 4 years before that sentence!)

Not to mention all the concerns coming from the FOS world years before the cloud became a buzzword, for example in relation to “walled garden app stores” or “palladium chips”… I don’t know how much the FOS world was right about those subjects, but I think it was already in the early 2000 when they talked about big companies “wanting to turn personal computers into terminals” (which, in my opinion, is a fitting description for cloud/sas). And I think they were definitely right about that.

I remember reading my fair share about that on computer magazines (especially those about GNU/Linux) when I was in highschool age in the early 2000 (then I stopped, I’m way more interested in making music, even if I earn my living thanks to IT).


Anyway, the trend for sas was there regardless of that sentence, because software as service makes sense (for the companies, of course!!!) to have a steady income, especially when software is already mature / the market is saturated…


Just my two cents…

[jamcat]

I'm not saying the concept didn't exist at all prior to the 2012 ruling. I'm just saying it accelerated the move towards subscription services, and particularly subscription-only models.

Subscriptions actually align with what software really is—intellectual property owned by the developer that is licensed to the user to use with restrictions—much better than the CJEU's ignorant view of software as a physical object that is bought and sold like widgets.

All the CJEU really did was say software companies aren't allow to be nice and give you perpetual use of your license without giving up their basic right to control the future licensing of their own intellectual property.

[plexuss]

I'm not saying the concept didn't exist at all prior to the 2012 ruling. I'm just saying it accelerated the move towards subscription services, and particularly subscription-only models.

In 1986 I was living with my cousin and roommates while we were going to university. My cousin was a "programmer". He got a contract with a company and they gave him a PDP 11 system and a 10MB Winchester disk (early remote work). The job was "distributed applications", specifcally a text editor where the actual file editing would occur on a VAX 780 over the phone line. On the user's end, would be the UI. This concept was totally fascinating and they pulled it off. I am sure distributed applications existed before this.

Those were the days.

Also, we had another roommate who was a "programmer" and considering a job at Microsoft. Bill Gates flew him to Seatle for an interview. One day the phone rang. It was Bill Gates looking for my roommate to try and convince him to work for Microsoft. "Doug! Bill Gates is on the phone!" Dour told Bill he wasnt interested in the job.

Those were the days.

When it comes to software, what is being traded is the license, not the software. The product in the license. It's perfectly reasonable to allow the re-sale of the license as a product or a thing. The software is the IP. The license is the thing that allows you to use it can be traded without comprimising the IP. #NONFR

[jamcat]

The license isn't a thing to be passed around from one person to another. A license is explicit permission granted by the licensor to the licensee, usually for a fee. The IP holder should have, and always had (up until 2012) control over who that permission is granted to, and the terms under which the permission is granted.

If a filmmaker wants to use your music for his film, he has to license it. It doesn't matter if he never gets it distributed, or if no one ever sees his film or even if he abandons working on it halfway through. He still cannot sell his license to use your music to another filmmaker. That other filmmaker must get his own license.

If someone buys your mp3, then decides they don't like your song anymore, they cannot sell that mp3 to someone else. Musicians fundamentally understand this concept when applied to their copyrighted work. Why do some not understand it when applied to a software developer's copyrighted work?

And answer this: if you made music using someone's IP, and then you sold your license, can you even still distribute the music made with that IP? Remember, this isn't a physical object that we're talking about. We're talking about pure IP.

Consider the filmmaker. If he sold his license to use your music in his film, could he still distribute his film with your music in it? If a software developer licensed another developer's libraries, and then sold his license after he compiled, could he still distribute his software that was made with 3rd party code that he no longer has a license for?

.

[zerocrossing]

If someone buys your mp3, then decides they don't like your song anymore, they cannot sell that mp3 to someone else. Musicians fundamentally understand this concept when applied to their copyrighted work. Why do some not understand it when applied to a software developer's copyrighted work?

Because they’ve never created anything that anyone would pay money for, so they have no idea what it’s like to try and make a living off of something like that.

[plexuss]

jamcat you are simply incorrect in your assessment of licenses. Licenses of all kinds are sold and transferred and even leased across many different kinds of products. You stand on an island in terms of your understand of licenses. Perhaps do a little research. But if not and want to maintain your position, know that you are in general incorrect.

[jamcat]

Use of licenses in a product to sell or license down the road is covered in the original license.

Sample libraries are a good example of that. All terms regarding that are laid out in the license agreement.

If those terms don’t exist, you cannot redistribute in derivative works.

[kritikon]

Stupid US viewpoint, same kind of ultratracapitalist shite that dumb govts sign up for in free trade pacts whereby they can and do get taken to court by corporations for imposing, say, green politics then get sued by oil companies for blocking oil trade. Sw...we sell it but you have no rights because it's ours. Thank f**k that occasionally bodies like the EU actually stand up for customers. Personally, I hope Cherry get their arse roundly kicked in Europe. I never bought any Cherry stuff, so no skin off my nose. I hope some Europeans do get irked enough to rip them a new one though. Can't see me ever buying anything from them in the future though. This crap puts them on a rare pedestal of shite companies IMO...not as bad as Sony, but twats nevertheless.

[jamcat]

Yeah, owning the product of your own labour is a stupid bourgeois concept, comrade.