License change

[ghost]

SSO currently uses proprietary license called CC-Sampling-Plus. Since Matthias no longer maintains SSO, maybe he can change the license to something free such as CC-BY or CC-BY-SA?

Also, the sources of the files are not clear and if some original files are CC-BY-SA (which falls under "CC-licensed") then Matthias doesn't have permission to relicense them as CC-Sampling-Plus.

[peastman]

Hi Lyberta,

CC-Sampling+ is a Creative Commons license, not a proprietary one. It's much better suited to this kind of library than CC-BY-SA, because it doesn't put any restrictions on your music. If we switched to CC-BY-SA, any music you created with these instruments would itself have to be released under the same license. I did ask Mattias about switching to CC-BY, but he preferred to stick with CC-Sampling+.

See the README for information about the origins of the samples.

[ghost]

CC-Sampling-Plus forbids commercial distribution of the library. This makes it impossible to put it in Debian Main, Trisquel, Parabola and other repositories because content from those repositories gets sold and because freedom of distribution is a fundamental freedom.

[peastman]

You could write to Mattias and try to convince him to change the license. As long as he wants to stick with this one, there's nothing I can do about it.

[unfa]

The most free of all would be CC-0, right?
But that would mean the creators and contributors may not be credited for their work.
Also - re-licensing probably needs a written permission from all contributors, so if a lot of people were involved, it may be very difficult to do.

[caryoscelus]

CC-Sampling+ is a Creative Commons license, not a proprietary one

CC-Sampling+ is a (retired) CC license that isn't free license . just like those with NC or ND clauses

there is a reason why it's retired (brief note on CC site : "Not compatible with any other CC license, inadequate demand")

and if we're to believe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/ explanation (or you can just read the whole text and make sure it's the same) , it's strictly worse than regular CC-BY , because the only difference is that it only allows CC-BY stuff on small samples (while the whole work is pretty much ND) . i think CC-BY with a group pseudonym would work fine (not too much burden on attribution side) or CC-0 would be most convenient .

i realize relicensing is hard to make , but otherwise this library is unfortunately a pseudo-free copyright trap . any of the contributors (or their representatives or heirs) can track down its usage and blackmail any author of the track that uses this library because they almost inevitably violated copyright by not attributing every single contributor

[peastman]

You really aren't talking to the right person. Mattias is the only person who can change the license. If you can convince him to relicense it under CC-BY, that's fine with me.

[caryoscelus]

You really aren't talking to the right person.

i'm not talking to a person . i'm talking to the community

Mattias is the only person who can change the license.

i believe that's what you believe . but from the information i gathered i don't believe that this repository being legal and Mattias being the only person who can change the license is consistent information . either they didn't have rights to license it the way they did in the first place or any changes made since are violation of that license (most likely it's combination of both) . then there's very same project slice somewhere lying licensed under CC-BY . is that violation ? how should i know ?

but this project is unsafe to use as it is . that is all

i'm not interested in persuading you necessarily here , i want other people interested in this project to know this perspective

[peastman]

There's two parts to the library: the sound files and the SFZ instruments. To the extent that Mattias did his research well when assembling the sound files, all of them are available under permissive licenses and anyone is free to reuse them under the terms of those original licenses. The instruments were created by Mattias, so he holds the copyright on them and can choose whatever license he wants.

[caryoscelus]

The instruments were created by Mattias, so he holds the copyright on them and can choose whatever license he wants.

yet there are commits in this very repository which modify sfz files without any indication that the changes are by Mattias . furthermore some of the comments suggests that they are indeed not . something that is clearly not allowed by CC-sampling+

i'm not going to try and change this library becoming free culture piece , just warning you and anyone involved of these legal issues