HISE, an open source competitor to Kontakt

[Burillo]

as the author, he is entitled to do with his product whatever he wants. the license applies to what other people can do to his work, not what he himself is obligated to do with it. if HISE is GPL, that doesn't mean he has to release all changes to it as GPL - that only means that if you use HISE to make a derivative work, you have to abide by the GPL and release all your changes as GPL. that means, even if HISE wasn't dual-licensed, he would still be able to offer a commercial version. not offering dual-licensing model would only mean that you can't offer a commercial (closed-source) version of anything built atop HISE - but he still could, as he owns it.

[baaz]

as the author, he is entitled to do with his product whatever he wants. the license applies to what other people can do to his work, not what he himself is obligated to do with it. if HISE is GPL, that doesn't mean he has to release all changes to it as GPL - that only means that if you use HISE to make a derivative work, you have to abide by the GPL and release all your changes as GPL. that means, even if HISE wasn't dual-licensed, he would still be able to offer a commercial version. not offering dual-licensing model would only mean that you can't offer a commercial (closed-source) version of anything built atop HISE - but he still could, as he owns it.

This whole scenario is only true if he is the only one writing the code, which is not always true for open source projects. In order to have a dual licensing model, a CLA(Contributor License Agreement) should be in place to state in clear terms that contributions to the project will be Re-licensed under a non-GPL license(proprietary/commercial or whatever). These sort of terms often discourage other developers from committing any code unless they really trust the developer. If any CLA is not explicitly stated then developer has to ask for permissions from each and every single contributor, since contributed code is copyrighted under GPL mixing any code(author's own) will make the whole code GPL.

[Gamma-UT]

Is it too much to ask that, instead of blithering on about what might be the case regarding licence, people just go and have a look first. The code is there on Github for starters - being an open source project and all. JUCE is the primary dependency and also offered under a dual licence. So, unless he's been very naughty, there is no requirement on the dev to make HISE only available under a GPL.

Here are the others noted on the HISE site - note the use of modules that employ non-GPL FOSS licences:

Apart from the JUCE C++ library, there are some other 3rd party frameworks and libraries included in HISE, which are all non restrictively licenced (either BSD or MIT):

ICSTDP DSP library: A pretty decent DSP library with some good and fast routines. Website
Tiny C Compiler Awesome little compiler that translates C files into machine code within milliseconds. It is embedded into HISE as development tool. The compiler is LGPL licenced, so it is linked dynamically into HISE, but for closed source plugins, the C files will be compiled by a "real" compiler anyway.
Kiss FFT: A easy and C-only FFT library with a clean interface and acceptable performance. It is used as fallback FFT when the IPP library is not available.
WDL (just for the convolution, it might get sorted out in the future)
MDA Plugins: a collection of audio effects recently published as open source project.
some other public domain code taken from various sources (music-dsp.org, etc.).

[baaz]

... So, unless he's been very naughty, there is no requirement on the dev to make HISE only available under a GPL....

like i said in the previous post

....If any CLA is not explicitly stated then developer has to ask for permissions from each and every single contributor, since contributed code(by others) is copyrighted under GPL and mixing any code(including author's own) will make the whole code GPL....

Here are the others noted on the HISE site - note the use of modules that employ non-GPL FOSS licences:

Use of "non-GPL FOSS licences" doesn't mean author can take all the code contributed by others under GPL and distribute it as a proprietary blob for commercial purpose.

[Gamma-UT]

Use of "non-GPL FOSS licences" doesn't mean author can take all the code contributed by others under GPL and distribute it as a proprietary blob for commercial purpose.

Other than JUCE (which I think the dev has already said was licensed in its commercial form and so doesn't have the GPL restriction) where is this GPL code that would appear in the commercially licensed HISE? Please point it out. The source for the GPLed version of HISE is online. It shouldn't be that hard if you're so keen to demonstrate wrongdoing.

[baaz]

Use of "non-GPL FOSS licences" doesn't mean author can take all the code contributed by others under GPL and distribute it as a proprietary blob for commercial purpose.

Other than JUCE (which I think the dev has already said was licensed in its commercial form and so doesn't have the GPL restriction) where is this GPL code that would appear in the commercially licensed HISE? Please point it out. The source for the GPLed version of HISE is online. It shouldn't be that hard if you're so keen to demonstrate wrongdoing.

https://github.com/christophhart/HISE/pulls
https://github.com/christophhart/HISE/p ... s%3Aclosed

Dude, What's so hard to understand here? it's a simple concept. An open source software is not written by a single person, anyone can contribute code to an opensource project. and unless stated otherwise, people who are contributing code are doing so under the current license of the project (GPL for HISE). you are not supposed to take their code and close source it and make money off of it, unless they permit you to do so.

[Burillo]

anyone can contribute but the author doesn't have to accept the contributions, if he doesn't want to deal with complications of licensing. people contributing to the project contribute under current license, but they do not grant ownership for the contributions to the project author unless CLA is in place.

[Gamma-UT]

anyone can contribute but the author doesn't have to accept the contributions, if he doesn't want to deal with complications of licensing. people contributing to the project contribute under current license, but they do not grant ownership unless CLA is in place.

The dev might want to look into the use of a standard contributor licence to handle the closed-source part of this. It would make his life easier in the long run with a dual-licence model - I can't find one for the moment.

But yes, there is a grand total of two commits from a third party that appears to have made it into any of the branches.

[baaz]

anyone can contribute but the author doesn't have to accept the contributions, if he doesn't want to deal with complications of licensing.

I have provided a link for pull requests in previous post, you can check the contributions yourself.

Anyway, What's the point of releasing it under GPL and hosting the project on Github if there will be no contributions. QT, JUCE, MongoDB, all major dual licensed software have a CLA.

do not grant ownership for the contributions to the project author unless CLA is in place.

like i said before... they allow their code to be "Re-licensed" under CLA, even with the CLA in place they always remain the copyright owners of their contributed code...

[Gamma-UT]

So, basically, after all that to-ing and fro-ing, the upshot is: this project should have a standard CLA. Why not say that in the first place instead of all that arm-waving?

[baaz]

So, basically, after all that to-ing and fro-ing, the upshot is: this project should have a standard CLA. Why not say that in the first place instead of all that arm-waving?

Because it's the obvious thing to do for developers who want to dual license their code, in order to avoid legal trouble... in this case perhaps it's lack of research.

[harvon]

So much discussion on hise business model.

We hobby musicians would like to have a free gratis player for instrument libraries that is capable of doing what kontakt does. We want it to play both free gratis and commercial instrument libraries in an equal way, no limitations, no restrictions. The library format has to be public and open. Making and publishing both free gratis and commercial libraries has to be possible by the player itself or by some accompanying free gratis software.

I have no interest or intentions to buy a player because I can download vst instruments for free.

Nobody buys a player when there are no instruments for it, and nobody makes instruments for a player that people don't have.

[SampleScience]

Using Hise for commercial use is not free, but if you use it to create free instruments, then there are no fees to pay. It's only if you want to go the commercial route that you have to pay a JUCE license and a licensing fee to the Hise developer (fair enough). Also, you have to buy a Visual Studio license on Windows to be able to release commercial plugins on Windows.

That being said, the reason why you don't see much free Hise made instruments is that it's time-consuming to do. Debugging alone can take weeks, especially if you want to support multiple OS. Hise itself has bugs (like any software), so you have to follow the update on Github closely.

There's also the fact that when you release a completely free instrument, you'll have a lot of people asking for support. Much more than if you release a commercial instrument. Unless you ignore all the support requests, it's actually more work to release a free plugin than a commercial one.

By the way, the Hise player project has been put on hold. It's unlikely it will see the light of day any time soon.

[Googly Smythe]

Completely OT and nothing to do with anything, so, Mods, feel free to delete

Back in the dark ages, when I was young, I worked for a remainders book company. For about 4 years there was this stack of books, about 1500 of them, titled "The Hise Potty Book". It was sealed with shrink wrap, and very dusty, so it was left alone, poor and unwanted.
Well, one day, there came an order for the whole lot!
Because the pallet needed re-wrapping, we got to have a look at the inside of this book.
Turns out that it was a micky-take of posh accents.
Hise Potty turned out to be "house party".
The book was actually hilarious and I wish I had bought a copy.

OK, I'll get back in my box...

[TotalComposure]

Using Hise for commercial use is not free.

HISE commercial use is gratis. HISE proprietary closed source use is not gratis.

You can release commercial software under the GNU GPL license, in fact the FSF encourage it to promote the creation of more free software. Wordpress and its enormous amount of plugins is probably the most successful example of commercial free software.

Also, you have to buy a Visual Studio license on Windows to be able to release commercial plugins on Windows.

I didn't see this mentioned in the community edition license agreement. - https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

Where did you get this info?