From: Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fecha: 26/06/06 13:33 Now the sad part. Here is a quotation from the download page of the VST-SDK, http://ygrabit.steinberg.de/~ygrabit/public_html/index.html
What is the VST-SDK? Does it mean "VST Software Development Kit"? Is it some non-free software for compiling programs that are supposed to work with VST? If so, we cannot use it anyway. Non-free software is unethical. The use of a non-free compiler or library is a problem, not a solution. We need to replace VST-SDK, just as we needed to replace AT&T's non-free C compiler. The last paragraph is directly against the principles of the GPL, as far as= I understand it. To be able to compile a VST plugin, you need to include a= t least one header supplied by Steinberg, which you are forbidden to redist= ribute with your program, We have to replace that header file with another. Unix had lots of header files, and we had to replace them as part of replacing Unix. Replacing VST-SDK requires replacing its header files too. If someone wants to work on this, seriously work hard on this, the FSF can get legal advice about how. What does this mean in practice? The main thing is it means dssi-vst is not Free Software in the terms of e.g. the Debian Free Software Guidelines. That is basically inevitable. A program that depends on their non-free header can't be free software. But we can replace that header! It is NOT necessary for the replacement to be compatible at the source level. You can define a new C-level interface for free software. It is only at the binary level that compatibility might be desirable, IF you want to interoperate with the non-free virtual instruments. In the long term, what we need to do is replace those non-free virtual instruments with free ones. Non-free software is a social problem, and our goal should be to help everyone escape from it completely. -- Marcos Guglielmetti * Director del desarrollo de Musix GNU+Linux, 100% Software Libre * Descarga el CD de Musix: (www.musix.org.ar) (www.pc-musica.com.ar/musix) * Videos, programas y otras cosas en: ftp://musix.ourproject.org/pub/musix/ * Reporte de errores a: https://www.musix.org.ar/wiki/index.php?title=Problemas-Bugs *IRC: #musix channel on freenode Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
