[PD] PD license technicalities with regard to selling a project...

[oliver oli]

if you only writing patches in Pd without modifying the C sources of Pd 
and the externals, you can sell without any legal problems. As Frank 
wrote, if you modify the sources of some GPLed externals (like 
everything written with the flext library), you have to release the 
sources. But if you release the sources there are no legal problems with 
selling your product.

You only have to be aware that people could disassemble the device and 
get access to the pd patch. Maybe there are not allowed to use it for 
other purposes, because you have the copyright. But AFAIK there is no 
way to compile the patch to some unreadable format.

Of course you could use Pd as an audio framework and write most of your 
stuff as an Pd external, if you're afraid that people can steal your 
code. Because Pd is under an BSD-style license you are allowed to use 
closed source externals with it (this would even be possible, if Pd was 
under the GPL)

rodney wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I am hoping to sell a musical gadget to childrens' science museums and
> similar institutions.
> 
> Among other things, it uses PD to handle the sequencing of midi for the
> sound.
> 
> I am a bit unclear about the legalities of doing so because of PD's GPL
> license.
> 
> I guess that what I need to do is make it clear in the sale agreement that
> the PD part is free and that no charge is being made for it.
> 
> Because the project will eventually run under windows (currently linux), it
> would be possible to use Max instead of PD. How do Cycling74 handle that
> kind of re-sale stuff? They have playback only modules for max don't they?
> Do people sell Max projects in that form?
> 
> I'd rather use PD because it already works just fine, but I want to make a
> nice easy to sell package for the customer.
> 
> The other major component is also gpl, but we negotiated with the author to
> get a non-gpl distribution of his liraries.
> 
> Anyone have some clues about this kind of thing?