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Re: LinuxSampler?



Hi Ismael,

What is the status of packaging LinuxSampler for Debian?

Isn't it a completely frozen proyect?

Not at all, it's under active development. My understanding of the situation is this...

The LinuxSampler developers were concerned that a hardware company would take their GPL'd code and put it into a proprietary product, disrespecting the licence. (A very valid concern, in my view). They therefore floated the idea that a future version of the software would have a GPL exception, which asked that commercial distributors contact the original developers for permission before shipping the code.

Some people over-reacted (in my opinion) to this proposed change, and said that they would no longer distribute or contribute to the LinuxSampler code. Some people were under the impression that LinuxSampler was no longer GPL'd, or had become proprietary - but I see no evidence for that.

In the meantime, at least one LinuxSampler developer has been working on the code, on behalf of the Italian company Lionstracs, which makes GNU/Linux-based keyboard instruments. (We also did some work at 64 Studio for this company). We ship LinuxSampler 0.3.3 and the qsampler GUI front-end 0.1.3 in 64 Studio, which are both under GPL.

The current release 0.4.0 is under GPL with the commercial use exception; you can get Debian i386 packages here:

http://download.linuxsampler.org/packages/debian/

I see no reason at all why version 0.4.0 should not be in Debian non-free.

Cheers!

Daniel



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