[PD] Re: PD-list Digest, Vol 11, Issue 2

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Thu Feb 2 00:15:00 CET 2006


On Feb 1, 2006, at 3:48 PM, Eric Lyon wrote:

>>
>>> The main reason I did not post the source is because it is not yet  
>>> unified
>>> or easy to compile, and I wanted to make the externals available  
>>> before
>>> however many months it might take for me to get the code in shape.  
>>> However
>>> you are welcome to get the code over here (but you have to figure  
>>> out how
>> to
>>> compile it).
>>
>> Figuring out stuff like this is what some people here specialize in.  
>> ;)
>>
>
> I'm aware of that; for now the code is online for anyone who would  
> like to
> play with it,  
> (http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~eric/MAX/FFTease/code.html)
> but I'm not happy with its current state, so I guess I don't want
> to put it on the main page where someone might download it, try to  
> compile
> it and it probably wouldn't work for them. There are a lot of gurus on  
> this
> list, but I think it's important to have consideration for some of the  
> people
> here who don't eat C code for breakfast.
>
>>> I think this is probably correct; as I understand it, the GPL places  
>>> some
>>> restrictions on what you can do with the code. I think we are a bit
>>> more permissive, but if there is some way that you find our  
>>> "licencette"
>>> more restrictive, I'm willing to consider relaxing it.
>>
>> The problem is, that any Open Source/Free Software by definition must
>> not pose any restrictions on how that software is used. So if FFTease
>> would *only* be allowed to be used for research and arts, but not for
>> any other uses (like making coffee), then FFTease would not be free
>> software as it violates "freedom 0": "The freedom to run the program,
>> for any purpose" - including making coffee.
>>
>
> Thanks for putting it that way. Technically it doesn't prohibit you  
> from
> making coffee or doing anything else, but I see that explicitly  
> stating the
> things that we expect most people would do with FFTease might imply
> that you can't do other things with it. I suppose we could say "can be
> freely used for any artistic or research purpose, or anything else you
> can think of," but that sounds kind of clunky. Note we did not use the
> word *only* in the licencette - we said what you *could* do, not what
> you couldn't do. I might consider something like Christopher's  
> licencette for
> HyperUpic which states, "use freely at your own psychological risk."
>
> It's tough to cover all bases. For example, IIRC Miller states that you
> can use Pd "for any reasonable purpose." But I reckon that many uses
> of Pd might be considered unreasonable and that's what makes them
> interesting. If this is really a problem for people, I'll give it some  
> thought
> and see if I can come up with something that doesn't offend my sense
> of aesthetics.

Miller releases Pd with the BSD license, which allows anyone to do  
anything with the code as long as they include the copyright notice.   
The BSD or MIT license could work well for FFTease.  For example, it  
would allow us to include FFTease in the Pd-extended builds  
(http://at.or.at/hans/pd/installers.html ), then it would work on all  
three platforms, and would be included as a binary automatically for  
anyone who installed one of those packages.

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php



A couple of things would make it much easier to build too.

- move the headers in "include" with the source like how its done with  
Pd itself.


- In MSPd.h, use the _MSC_VER macro, which is defines by MS Visual C++,  
so that only these defines are only used by that compiler.  I.e.  
change:
#define MSP (1)
#define PD (!MSP)

To this:
#ifdef _MSC_VER
#define MSP (1)
#define PD (!MSP)
#endif /* _MSC_VER */


- unifying the lib source instead of having a directory per OS with  
some duplicated files, You can use make's "ifeq" include different  
things for building in the Makefile.  Its used in externals/Makefile,  
if you want an example.


There are other things too that I would be willing to do if the license  
would allow us to keep the FFTease source in the pure-data CVS, and  
distribute it with Pd-extended, which must be distributed using a GNU  
GPL license.

.hc

________________________________________________________________________ 
____

"Looking at things from a more basic level, you can come up with a more  
direct solution... It may sound small in theory, but it in practice, it  
can change entire economies."
                                                     - Amy Smith





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