Dual license MIT and GPLv3

[yupferris]

Doing this would allow us to properly comply with the VST3 SDK requirements without signing the proprietary agreement, including distributing binary plugin builds which would be licensed as GPLv3 only, while the rest of WS (including the core/player code, which is what users will pack in their binaries) can still be MIT-licensed (or, GPLv3 if they so choose, which is a possibility we've not offered before).

I think this logic is sound, but other opinions/interpretations would be appreciated.

[kusma]

I think you can simply MIT license all the non-VST code, as MIT is compatible with GPL. And then you can license the VST as GPLv3. Not sure actual dual-licensing is needed or even solves anything.

I don't think that hurts any use-cases:

• Intros can be distributed without source, because they don't contain the VST itself.
• Binary distributions of the VSTs would require making the source code available. But this doesn't seem likely to be a problem. Do we even care? The only practical example I can think of would be if someone wants to provide binary versions of a proprietary fork of WaveSabre, which seems... unlikely to me... And if it happens, I'm not sure if it's a good thing ;)

[yupferris]

Ah, so you mean only license the binary builds of the VSTs as GPLv3, but keep all source MIT-licensed? That would indeed be simpler than dual-licensing (all) code, if that's sufficient to meet the VST3 SDK's GPLv3 license terms, which is the core issue we want to solve here. I was under the impression that the source had to be GPLv3-licensed in order to support a binary build under that license, but this may not be the case.

[kusma]

No, I meant to license the VST specific source code as GPLv3. I don't really mind if you prefer to dual-license it, but I don't think that's necessary.

I don't think there's any need to have MIT license on the VST specific sources, and I don't there's any need to have GPLv3 license on the core sources.

[yupferris]

Right, that makes sense.