Thread: [Audacity-devel] libsamplerate and VST plugins
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From: Erik de C. L. <ml...@me...> - 2011-02-15 23:39:18
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Hi all, Since the issue of libsamplerate and VST seems to be a recurring issue I'd like to shed some light. What's the problem? The problem is that the license of libsamplerate (GNU GPL) is incompatible with the license of VST header files. This basically means that these two pieces of code cannot be linked together in the same executable (not even at run time by means of a DLL/dynlib/shared object). Is there a solution? One solution is the separate the the VST code from the libsamplerate code into separate processes and then use IPC (inter process communications, eg stdin/stdout, pipes, sockets, shared memory etc) to transfer data between them. Since the major part of the problem is with the license on the VST header files (ie they are not allowed to be re-distributed but each person must get them directly from steinberg), the obvious thing would be to put the VST plugin code in a separate process. This is just a suggestion. Please do not take this as me volunteering to write this code. I have way too much of my own code that needs me to write it :-). Regards, Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ |
From: Alexandre P. <ale...@gm...> - 2011-02-16 04:22:43
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On 2/16/11, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > Since the major part of the problem is with the license on the VST > header files (ie they are not allowed to be re-distributed but each > person must get them directly from steinberg), the obvious thing > would be to put the VST plugin code in a separate process. An even more obvious solution is to bloody well use open source VeSTige reverse-engineeered headers. I'm amazed we still don't do it. Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org |
From: Erik de C. L. <ml...@me...> - 2011-02-16 04:45:13
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Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > On 2/16/11, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > > > Since the major part of the problem is with the license on the VST > > header files (ie they are not allowed to be re-distributed but each > > person must get them directly from steinberg), the obvious thing > > would be to put the VST plugin code in a separate process. > > An even more obvious solution is to bloody well use open source > VeSTige reverse-engineeered headers. I'm amazed we still don't do it. That would also be a solution as long as any VST plugin distributed in the Audacity tarball/zipfile/installer/whatever was under a GPL compatible license. Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ |
From: Steve t. F. <ste...@gm...> - 2011-02-16 18:22:06
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On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:45 AM, Erik de Castro Lopo <ml...@me...> wrote: > Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > >> On 2/16/11, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: >> >> > Since the major part of the problem is with the license on the VST >> > header files (ie they are not allowed to be re-distributed but each >> > person must get them directly from steinberg), the obvious thing >> > would be to put the VST plugin code in a separate process. >> >> An even more obvious solution is to bloody well use open source >> VeSTige reverse-engineeered headers. I'm amazed we still don't do it. > > That would also be a solution as long as any VST plugin distributed > in the Audacity tarball/zipfile/installer/whatever was under a GPL > compatible license. > > Erik > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Erik de Castro Lopo > http://www.mega-nerd.com/ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ That shouldn't be a problem for official Audacity releases as there are no VST plug-ins distributed with Audacity. Steve |
From: Richard A. <ri...@au...> - 2011-02-18 22:22:58
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On Wed, 2011-02-16 at 18:21 +0000, Steve the Fiddle wrote: > On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:45 AM, Erik de Castro Lopo > <ml...@me...> wrote: > > Alexandre Prokoudine wrote: > > > >> On 2/16/11, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > >> > >> > Since the major part of the problem is with the license on the VST > >> > header files (ie they are not allowed to be re-distributed but each > >> > person must get them directly from steinberg), the obvious thing > >> > would be to put the VST plugin code in a separate process. > >> > >> An even more obvious solution is to bloody well use open source > >> VeSTige reverse-engineeered headers. I'm amazed we still don't do it. The implementation now in Audacity (and for the last few years) is based on on the VeSTige headers (the one that needed Steinberg headers in audacity died with 1.0.0, the LADSPA bridge was always a separate download) see src/effects/VST/aeffectx.h http://code.google.com/p/audacity/source/browse/audacity-src/trunk/src/effects/VST/aeffectx.h > > That would also be a solution as long as any VST plugin distributed > > in the Audacity tarball/zipfile/installer/whatever was under a GPL > > compatible license. > > > > Erik > That shouldn't be a problem for official Audacity releases as there > are no VST plug-ins distributed with Audacity. Again, this has been the case since 1.2.0 - we took freeverb out (because it didn't work without VST support) and ship gverb instead (which is a LADSPA plugin). So to summarise: * Audacity's source does not require the Steinberg VST SDK in order to compile with VST support enabled, thanks to the VeSTige header. * Audacity binary releases for Windows and Mac from the Audacity Team are built with VST support enabled. * Audacity release packages (in any format) do not contain any VST plug-ins, or source therefore. I don't see that position changing any time soon. Erik, what restrictions does this place on Audacity vis-a-vis use of libsamplerate? Richard |
From: Erik de C. L. <ml...@me...> - 2011-02-21 10:46:18
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Richard Ash wrote: > So to summarise: > * Audacity's source does not require the Steinberg VST SDK in order to > compile with VST support enabled, thanks to the VeSTige header. Thats sounds good. > * Audacity binary releases for Windows and Mac from the Audacity Team > are built with VST support enabled. Thats fine, the GPL only really kicks in at time of distribution. > * Audacity release packages (in any format) do not contain any VST > plug-ins, or source therefore. Thats good! > I don't see that position changing any time soon. Erik, what > restrictions does this place on Audacity vis-a-vis use of > libsamplerate? Looks good. The only possible problems are at time of distribution. As long as there is a readme fine say that Audacity links to GPL licensed code and includes a copy of the GPL all should be fine. The same also goes for LGPL libraries. HTH, Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ |
From: Richard A. <ri...@au...> - 2011-02-21 22:27:22
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On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 21:46 +1100, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > Richard Ash wrote: > > > So to summarise: > > * Audacity's source does not require the Steinberg VST SDK in order to > > compile with VST support enabled, thanks to the VeSTige header. > > Thats sounds good. > > > * Audacity binary releases for Windows and Mac from the Audacity Team > > are built with VST support enabled. > > Thats fine, the GPL only really kicks in at time of distribution. > > > * Audacity release packages (in any format) do not contain any VST > > plug-ins, or source therefore. > > Thats good! (just to be clear, there are (GPL) LADSPA plugins and Nyquist ones, but no VST) > > I don't see that position changing any time soon. Erik, what > > restrictions does this place on Audacity vis-a-vis use of > > libsamplerate? > > Looks good. The only possible problems are at time of distribution. > As long as there is a readme fine say that Audacity links to > GPL licensed code and includes a copy of the GPL all should be > fine. The same also goes for LGPL libraries. We have the GPL text in the binary in the Help > About dialogue (so it can't get lost) and in the Windows installer (so people see it). The README.txt is a bit mammoth, but includes a list of all the libraries (I hope - unless it's got out of date) and their licenses. LICENSE.txt has the GPL (v2) text in it. I can't find in the binary packages (I'm looking at the windows zip because it's easy) the text of the LGPL anywhere, which is an oversight - we should have it in there because of the libraries we are using, and probably the wx license as well. Richard |