LV2 support in JUCE
Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:12 am
A while ago, someone implemented an LV2 interface for JUCE so that people who used JUCE for their plugins could compile them with LV2 support without any additional work. This feature, sadly, was never merged into JUCE upstream, and its author started his own GUI framework called DPF.
Many free plugins use JUCE, and it would be nice to have them easily available in all distros. But for that to happen, JUCE should support LV2, since it's the most widely supported plugin format on GNU/Linux. If you care about more free (and even proprietary and commercial) plugins such as synths being easily available on GNU/Linux without relying on proprietary and discontinued VST2 support (since they have not yet implemented GPLv3'd VST3 support, and VST3 is not supported by any free DAW anyway), here is the issue on Github. Even a thumbs up to that issue would be fine, there are already 25.
Perhaps ROLI thinks that LV2 support is not profitable, because GNU/Linux users aren't too many, they aren't used to pay for software in many cases and GNU/Linux is already supported via VST2, even if it's a deprecated SDK which cannot be legally distributed without getting a DMCA from Yamaha. But the code is already out there (of course, it's a bit old so there might be a need to adapt it to the latest version of JUCE) and I hope some of the professionals here can provide ROLI with good arguments for supporting LV2 or to accept contributions from the community, if they don't want to support it themselves.
Thank you!
Edit: I noticed some negative comments on ROLI's issue tracker. This topic was a way to bring a matter dear to many (more LV2 support) to attention, not a call for brigades or things like that. I apologize for any unintended effects, please let's be as kind as possible toward ROLI, what they do for free software is already pretty nice!
Many free plugins use JUCE, and it would be nice to have them easily available in all distros. But for that to happen, JUCE should support LV2, since it's the most widely supported plugin format on GNU/Linux. If you care about more free (and even proprietary and commercial) plugins such as synths being easily available on GNU/Linux without relying on proprietary and discontinued VST2 support (since they have not yet implemented GPLv3'd VST3 support, and VST3 is not supported by any free DAW anyway), here is the issue on Github. Even a thumbs up to that issue would be fine, there are already 25.
Perhaps ROLI thinks that LV2 support is not profitable, because GNU/Linux users aren't too many, they aren't used to pay for software in many cases and GNU/Linux is already supported via VST2, even if it's a deprecated SDK which cannot be legally distributed without getting a DMCA from Yamaha. But the code is already out there (of course, it's a bit old so there might be a need to adapt it to the latest version of JUCE) and I hope some of the professionals here can provide ROLI with good arguments for supporting LV2 or to accept contributions from the community, if they don't want to support it themselves.
Thank you!
Edit: I noticed some negative comments on ROLI's issue tracker. This topic was a way to bring a matter dear to many (more LV2 support) to attention, not a call for brigades or things like that. I apologize for any unintended effects, please let's be as kind as possible toward ROLI, what they do for free software is already pretty nice!