license?

[pedrolcl]

This repository lacks a explicit license statement.

In my opinion (and IANAL), the use of JUCE (under the AGPLv3) and VST3 (GPLv3) with FluidSynth (LGPLv2.1) makes GPLv3 (or AGPLv3) the only viable options.

[prof-spock]

Hello pedrocl,

thanks for your hint, this is definitely an omission!

There has been a discussion in the JUCE forum about the licensing of programs using JUCE. The conclusion is that the GPLv3 does not apply to source code that is not distributing JUCE itself.

Because Jules Storer - the creator of JUCE - himself had participated in that discussion, I assume that this is a accepted perspective: you may need JUCE to build some plugin, but the plugin license is at the discretion of its creator.

I am going to add the MIT license for the imminent next FluidSynthPlugin release, since it it a well-established license. If you are fine with that, this could resolve your issue.

Best regards, Prof. Spock

[pedrolcl]

Hi @prof-spock

Repeating myself: I am not a lawyer, and neither is @julianstorer, so please don't base your decisions only on our opinions.

Said that, I believe the choice of the MIT license would be completely fine, as long as all the code (and any other resource) in your project is yours, and you don't distribute any binaries. Because there is where the troubles begin...

Your releases contain not only sources, but also binaries for Windows, MacOS and Linux. That is logical, being your project a plugin (VST/AU) wrapping the fluidsynth library.

I don't use JUCE myself, but the Qt framework has similar licenses: either you use the GPL, or you pay a license fee to use the license of your choice. But I have some projects here in GitHub using Qt and under different open source licenses. For instance:

• frameless-qt-poc under the BSD-3-clause license.
• fluidsynth-qt-gui under the MIT license.

Both projects are source code only, and I don't plan to distribute binaries of them. So the quotation from Jules' comment applies:

If you publish your own code on github and say “here’s my code under the MIT license - oh, but by the way if you want to actually compile it then you’ll need to go and get yourself a copy of JUCE”, then that’s entirely your business and nothing to do with us.

But your binary plugins fall completely under the next paragraph:

Our license only gets involved if you were to distribute a binary which contains JUCE code. In doing that, you’ve agreed to our terms, and the other code in it must be subject to the GPL. But if you’re only giving away pure source code then this that’s not the case.

Your Linux binary ZIP is incomplete and do not contain all the needed libraries (which is another known issue #17) but the Windows ZIP package contains the binary VST3 plugin including JUCE code, the FluidSynth library and also many other open source libraries whose licenses you also need to take into account.