DDP images support in KXStudio?

[tatch]

Upon the terms and conditions set forth herein, DCA hereby grants to
the Licensee a limited, non-exclusive License to make use of the Licensed Material in order to create
products in the proper format for further processing (“Licensee Products”). The license does not grant
any rights to the Licensee to transfer or further distribute the Licensed Specification in any way
other than in the creation of Licensee Products.

The phrase to create products in the proper format for further processing almost sounds like they were not referring to software as a product but a DDP image itself, which wouldn't make too much sense to me. Anyway, let me know what you think.

I'm a native english speaker and I took a look at the DDP license. Lawspeak is always difficult to comprehend, even for natives, and tends to be an arguing point in a many a trial I have minimal experience with law jargon, but from what I gather, I'm not positive that falk may be able to legally distribute it (immediately at least). The license states you are given a "limited, non-exclusive license to make use of the Licensed Material" so let's see what these two terms mean:

Limited License (LL)

An agreement whereby software is purchased with limits and/or restrictions on the number of copies available for installation or use. LL's are sometimes limited to a designated number of computers (up to the number of Group Copies purchased) or as many users operating a Program at any given time as the number of Concurrent Copies purchased. Some LL's for educational instituions are restricted to use in connection with on-campus computing facilities that are used solely in support of classroom instruction and research activities of students, teaching faculty and staff, and research staff.

In this case I think it means there's a limit on what the company gave you (Licensed Material), not necessarily on what you yourself develop from that (Licensee Products). So that should be ok.

A non-exclusive license is the right to use something (could be a song or a short story or even a patented invention) on a non-exclusive basis (meaning that the owner of the property can also grant a license to someone else to use the property.) So, in summary, you get to use the thing but the owner can let someone else use the thing too. A non-exclusive license in websites, such as YouTube, allows the uploader to set their own license over copyright - whether it be all rights reserved, or Creative Commons Attribution. YouTube doesn't get the exclusive rights reserved to them over the work.

This means that they can give a DDP license to someone else too. Not a problem.

Moving onto the terms of the license:

the Licensee, by making use of the Licensed Specification,
can create products in the proper format for further processing (such products being herein referred to as
“Licensee Products”), such Licensee Products to be published, distributed, and communicated world-wide
by Licensee;

The license lets you make "Licensee Products" based off the license, and you can publish/distribute your products or tell people about it ("communicated world-wide")

Here's where I'm concerned though:

The license does not grant any rights to the Licensee to transfer or further distribute the Licensed Specification in any way other than in the creation of Licensee Products.

and

Except as otherwise provided within this Agreement, the Licensee may not
transfer or assign this Agreement, the subject matter of this agreement or any of the rights hereunder,
without the prior written consent of DCA.

I interpret this as "you can make your product and sell it, but you can't give others the ability to use the license without our approval". So even though you are allowed to publish it because you're the licensee, I don't know if letting falk publish it can still be considered "you" publishing it. It seems to me like DCA has to approve of you "transferring the agreement" to falk/KXStudio before he is legally allowed to publish. Probably the safest thing you can do is ask DCA directly, or you could also consult a lawyer or something. Of course (well you might not know but ) I'm no lawyer and this stuff almost always tends to be pretty vaguely-worded, so I could be completely wrong, but I would still suggest to contact DCA.

My 2c (and I say this with full awareness and respect that this is falk's baby, and what he says, goes!) is that I'm anti the inclusion of the software. I think that using it is supporting proprietary lock-in, and has no benefit other than to prolong the life of the format. Honestly, the whole thing seems contrary to all of the reasons I like to use open source software based on open standards.

I could be wrong... but I'm yet to hear anything to suggest that I am. I'm open minded to an education, if there's anything new to add?

I don't know much about this format in particular, and I tend to agree with "open-source software based on open standards", but because DDP seems like a "messenger" format (which is relatively harmless in my opinion, unlike something like mp3 which requires encoders, decoders and pulls in licensing issues from every single application that uses it), and because I don't think DDP sees much use outside this particular, relatively-niche use case, I think including the software (provided it legally can be included) is relatively inconsequential, maybe even positive if it attracts some users to Linux/KXStudio Plus it'd go in the nonfree repository, if you're against nonfree stuff you don't even need to look at it.

[i2productions]

I think you hit it. If CDs survive another 5 year its a miracle. Even my latest band has taken to the "new" physical distro ution model. USB flash drives with all sorts of band stuff on it. Original master .wav and .mp3 of their songs. Pictures, videos, and stuff like that. They're not selling much better than physical CDs, but its a step in the right direction away from CDs. I will be sad to see them go as a consumer, it as a producer the day can't come fast enough!

[anrug]

Hi tatch, thank you so much for taking the time to comment on the license terms!

Moving onto the terms of the license:

the Licensee, by making use of the Licensed Specification,
can create products in the proper format for further processing (such products being herein referred to as
“Licensee Products”), such Licensee Products to be published, distributed, and communicated world-wide
by Licensee;

The license lets you make "Licensee Products" based off the license, and you can publish/distribute your products or tell people about it ("communicated world-wide")

This is where I wonder I they possibly refer to the DDP image (files) and not the software by "Licensee Product". That does not make sense, as then almost any professional mastering engineer would have to sign a license. But "creating products in the proper format for further processing", I mean, how can my software be in the "proper format"? Only it's output can possibly be, right?

Here's where I'm concerned though:

The license does not grant any rights to the Licensee to transfer or further distribute the Licensed Specification in any way other than in the creation of Licensee Products.

But that's really only referring to the licensed material i.e. the spec, which I'm not allowed to show anybody.

and

Except as otherwise provided within this Agreement, the Licensee may not
transfer or assign this Agreement, the subject matter of this agreement or any of the rights hereunder,
without the prior written consent of DCA.

Of course I can not transfer my agreement with DCA to falk. The question ism would he need to sign a license - I don't think so, but as you suggest I've been aksing DCA, lat's see what they say.

My 2c (and I say this with full awareness and respect that this is falk's baby, and what he says, goes!) is that I'm anti the inclusion of the software. I think that using it is supporting proprietary lock-in, and has no benefit other than to prolong the life of the format. Honestly, the whole thing seems contrary to all of the reasons I like to use open source software based on open standards.

I could be wrong... but I'm yet to hear anything to suggest that I am. I'm open minded to an education, if there's anything new to add?

Absolutely agree, using DDP is helping manifest a proprietary format. But two things I'd like to add: first of all it's a very simple format using plain ASCII text, usually way less than 10 kB per DDP master, so it's hard to think of it like a proprietary codec or the like, or even Cubase projects (which I had to partly reverse engineer for a client once). And second, as much as I am for pushing free formats, in the audio mastering world it'svery unlikely to make any difference at all. This is such a small niche, plants will not start accepting different CD image formats, especially as there is no free format that could easily substitute DDP. I really hate to say it, but in the professional audio field (classical music in may case) that I've been working on in the last 13 years I've not heard of a single engineer using Linux. There certainly are some, and maybe much more outside my small classical music niche, but I doubt it maks any difference, if these few people were trying to push another format. I think thereare other places where lobbying for FLOSS an dopen standards is more effective.

But I have to admit that my background is a bit outside of what this forum's title suggests, I'm not an (active) musician or composer, but a recording producer and balance engineer, and only ever deal with classical music. I like Linux a lot, but I've never used it for any commercial audio work.

I think you hit it. If CDs survive another 5 year its a miracle. Even my latest band has taken to the "new" physical distro ution model. USB flash drives with all sorts of band stuff on it. Original master .wav and .mp3 of their songs. Pictures, videos, and stuff like that. They're not selling much better than physical CDs, but its a step in the right direction away from CDs. I will be sad to see them go as a consumer, it as a producer the day can't come fast enough!

In my classical niche the final media is still CD and SACD, but things start changing and more and more labels work together with services like eclassical or NAXOS to offer downloads as well. In general as a producer/engineer I don't really care to much what the end media is, but being able to deliver my mixes in full quality (i.e. 24 bit, without data-reduction) is something I really appreciate.

[tatch]

This is where I wonder I they possibly refer to the DDP image (files) and not the software by "Licensee Product". That does not make sense, as then almost any professional mastering engineer would have to sign a license. But "creating products in the proper format for further processing", I mean, how can my software be in the "proper format"? Only it's output can possibly be, right?

You're right, that wording is pretty tricky. If they're referring to the DDP image itself and not the program used to make it then they would be totally ignoring a step in the conversion process... They could be referring to your program being in the 'proper format' by properly utilizing the licensing specification, though that's a stretch.

Of course I can not transfer my agreement with DCA to falk. The question ism would he need to sign a license - I don't think so, but as you suggest I've been aksing DCA, lat's see what they say.

I think we know the following:
1) the license is for the specification itself, not necessarily for an application that uses the spec (but in order to develop the application you need the spec) and
2) anyone can go download an application that utilizes the specification without having to sign a DDP license because they don't see the spec/sourcecode containing the spec.
If that's true, then that should mean you have legal authority over the application/binary as the creator of the binaries. Based on that, it doesn't seem like falk would need a license after all since he would only be handling the software binaries and not be seeing any of the spec/source himself. But yeah, best way is to ask DCA, and then we can get a real answer instead of conjectures by ill-informed half-wits such as myself

[ToddMWorth]

This is such a small niche, plants will not start accepting different CD image formats, especially as there is no free format that could easily substitute DDP.

Well I guess this is a large part of my motivation to avoid the format - the plants will accept whatever makes them money. If their customers demand the studio to accept another format, and will take their business elsewhere and vote with their wallets, then the studio will find a way.

As we mentioned before (although I was lazy with my terminology and referred to it as an ISO) CUE/BIN + MD5 will do it, so there are free alternatives...

[anrug]

Well I guess this is a large part of my motivation to avoid the format - the plants will accept whatever makes them money. If their customers demand the studio to accept another format, and will take their business elsewhere and vote with their wallets, then the studio will find a way.

As we mentioned before (although I was lazy with my terminology and referred to it as an ISO) CUE/BIN + MD5 will do it, so there are free alternatives...

Basically I'm with you, they only way to change it is to demand it. Now in my special case, I don't really have the option, because I'm just the recording producer I'm not choosing the plant, but simply send masters to a label. And the people running the label are usually not experts in CD image file formats and especially do not like experiments, it ends up being DDP what they ask for, like 15 years ago, not on Exabyte any more but usually on a DVD-R or with FTP.

So, when you have direct contact to the plant, why not try pushing them into accepting other formats. (Basically this would mean that they rather than you would have to run a tool like cue2dpp. The LBR will always be driven by DDP, as far as I have been told -- but I may be wrong. But in that field it's very unlikely to vere find FLOSS.)

Some plants accepting cue/wav, but usually charge extra for this. That's a pain of course. BTW, technically cue/wav is not quite as easy as DDP, there are rare cases in which the plant can't be entirely sure, what you meant by the cue sheet, e.g. the cue sheet spec does not say, wich characters set is to be used and it does not say how to deal with quotation marks inside CD text strings. Also the ways it's used by many programs (i.e. without external CD text file) it does not specify all CD details, so the plant has to choose some default for you. Not the end of the world, but given the many programs which spit out cue sheets nowadays, the'll probably have some more inconvenience and more often need to call the customer to double check. There are also many extensions to the cue sheet format. Ideally one would complete the cue sheet specification or come up with a completely new format, but the again, that's probably way too late anyway.

BTW, if using a cue sheet, I'd prefer cue/wav over cue/bin, because it's much simpler listening to a wave file then a raw audio file. Just my 2c.

I think we know the following:
1) the license is for the specification itself, not necessarily for an application that uses the spec (but in order to develop the application you need the spec) and
2) anyone can go download an application that utilizes the specification without having to sign a DDP license because they don't see the spec/sourcecode containing the spec.
If that's true, then that should mean you have legal authority over the application/binary as the creator of the binaries. Based on that, it doesn't seem like falk would need a license after all since he would only be handling the software binaries and not be seeing any of the spec/source himself. But yeah, best way is to ask DCA

Ok, I've asked. DCA is fine with me having the program distributed by someone else. Even distributing source code does not seem to be a problem with them.

So the main problem with a GPL implementation is, that a special note stating that DDP is a tradmark and that the spec has been licensed is to be attached with each program, so adding such a clause to the GPL would still make it impossible for GPL programs to link against it, I believe. (But don't ask me about software licenses, even the GPL is too complicated for me to really comprehend.)

[i2productions]

But don't ask me about software licenses, even the GPL is too complicated for me to really comprehend.

That's what happens when legality works it's way into every fiber of life. Here's a new license you can all start using. It's called the IDGAFL(I Don't Give A F**k License):

Code: Select all

This software has been released into the universe and I don't give a f**k what you do it.  Enjoy!

For free software, why can't it be this simple?

[anrug]

Sorry, but I really have to ask now... have you consider a more liberal license that would allow your code to be fully distributed?

What exactly do you mean by more liberal?

If I could freely choose, I'd go with the GPL for the ddptools. Now, last time I talked to DCA they didn't see that as an option, and also the GPL does not like their "advertizing clause". So that's why I've been sticking to "freeware" (as in free beer). Now their last answer sounds like source code distribution might be OK, so I'm considering that, but this still does not make the GPL an option. I've even talked to the FSF about that a few years ago, but they can't give any legal advice. I'd have to hire an (American) laywer (and maybe a German, becuase copyright works quite differntly over here). That's certainly not what I'm interested in. Also the code that is DDP specific is way less than 2000 lines.

I've come to believe, that someone doing a clean room reverse-engineering is probably the simplest and safest solution. XLD and dvdtape have some skeleton code already. But anyway, that wouldn't be me. I happy enough if I find time enough to fix bugs in the ddptools (should someone find one).

[singforme]

Hi Andreas Ruge,

just wanted to say thank you for your awesome piece of software! Just made my first DDP and sent it off to the CD plant. I hope it works;)

Cheers!

Ben

[th0m]

Great work! Thank you so much! Had been using it successfully for some orchestral/classical production.