KVR Audio

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:32 am

So it wasn't two+, but exactly two weeks for me and I sent it early in September, FYI.

davidguda · Post by **davidguda** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:30 am

I still haven't got any response from them and I sent 3 weeks ago.
The only answer I got was the day after where the support guy said the guys handling licenses were on vacation for a week or so so it could take longer than usual.

I'm b.t.w. using JUCE 4 (not 5) where they still have there own VST implementation. If that makes any difference.
In a sense legally right or wrong matters less here anyway since basically a hobbyist has nothing to stand up to a big company like Steinberg if they think not licensed VST use should be stopped. The best would of course be getting a signed license, that way everyone is happy.
Either way I'll start making VST3 more of a priority in the future.

Xenakios · Post by **Xenakios** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:26 pm

The thread title is slightly misleading, by the way. The signed license agreement isn't needed only when selling VST2 plugins and hosts. This concerns developers of freeware and/or open source VST2 plugins and hosts just as badly. (Concerning the JUCE provided VST2 code in JUCE version 4, I believe also using that is now unauthorized if one hasn't signed the VST2 license agreement. Or maybe it is completely unauthorized to use any alternative headers/implementations at all now, under any situation. Obviously a specialist lawyer would be needed to figure that out for sure.)

For my part, I should have just signed and sent the agreement to Steinberg many many years ago already, but since I haven't done any commercial work, I thought maybe I could just let it slide, just for a while...Of course years just flew by...

Xenakios · Post by **Xenakios** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:30 pm

edit : messed up editing my post and quoted myself.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:39 pm

Unless they followed through with their suit and had the court find for the plaintiff regarding the header(s) being derived and eligible for copyright protection to begin with (that would go against both EU case-law and written law) and we've already seen the completion of any appeals process:

Using the existing headers is just as legal now as it ever has been.

If they settle things won't change. They need to take it before the courts and follow through up to the highest levels in the EU to challenge that.

If source has been removed from github you need to recognize:

github is owned by Microsoft and is a company in the United States which must obey DMCA takedown notices.
With a DMCA takedown notice the author has limited ability to defend themselves: according to United States law the host may continue to distribute the content without liability after the author replies to the DMCA takedown notice until provided with a notice of injunction after the case has been heard in a United States court.
If the author or other parties take down the content willingly after being threatened things are a lot more complex but no legal precedent is established.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:10 pm

Do a search for "Github DCMA takedown notice VeSTige header".

Speculation so far is that these notices were sent out by a poorly written script that didn't even follow Github's rules correctly and Github's scripts automatically enforced their usual DMCA notice procedures.

This action may only have been intended to target redistribution of the official VSTSDK which has a valid copyright associated with it.

Due to several mistakes however they may have accidentally targeted other non-derived works with similar filenames or keywords.

noizebox · Post by **noizebox** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:09 am

noizebox wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:57 am ..I snailmailed it to the them last week, and it should have reached them before the 1st October, but haven't received anything in return either. Let's hope the're just swamped with requests.

Received it this morning. Phew

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:27 am

All this makes me feel cringed. I've never seen some thing like this before. A vendor silently and as claimed "legally" pulls out a 14 year old rug from beneath hundreds of small developers more or less without their notice. And they don't even have the right to complain because it's their fault they just didn't happen to come here and see the post of some one not even associated with that vendor. Not only that, but they actually found out that their business has already been illegal for all these years just like every one else because they failed to do some thing that almost no one else in the API industry does. i.e "Sign and agreement to use an API".

Legal criminalization of the public.

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:03 pm

Such things happen when something wrong happens with the company's inner situation. From my sales polls, Steinberg lost a huge market share, 35% in 10 years. Still leading, but not by a huge margin. I see no relation of dwinding sales and forced VST2 removal, but it's probably one of decisions that tries to enforce "market lead". From technical standpoint and my experience with 3rd party libraries and frameworks, VST3 is not a win, so removal of VST2 may actually have a negative impact on company's PR image. I always expected them to release VST2.5 with some refinements (like totally removing all "deprecated" parts to make SDK light-weight), but that will probably never happen now.

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:15 pm

For example, one of the biggest mastering house relies on VST2 probably due to some automation tools they've built on top of it. They told me they can't use Voxengo VST3 plugins and need VST2 to work in hosts they use. They would not upgrade to WaveLab 9 if it discontinued VST2.

BlueprintInc · Post by **BlueprintInc** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:25 pm

S0lo wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:27 am All this makes me feel cringed. I've never seen some thing like this before. A vendor silently and as claimed "legally" pulls out a 14 year old rug from beneath hundreds of small developers more or less without their notice. And they don't even have the right to complain because it's their fault they just didn't happen to come here and see the post of some one not even associated with that vendor. Not only that, but they actually found out that their business has already been illegal for all these years just like every one else because they failed to do some thing that almost no one else in the API industry does. i.e "Sign and agreement to use an API".

Legal criminalization of the public.

There is this license text file in the root of every vst sdk which explicitely states "Before publishing a software under the proprietary license, you need to obtain a copy of the License Agreement signed by Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH."...

They've deprecated vst2 for 3 or 4 years. Every dev knew it would come to an end. Forums like JUCE or even the Steinberg forum itself have news & announcements threads where this has been discussed. Can't be such a surprise for a dev that has at least a minimal interest in his business and therefore his tools.

Guillaume Piolat · Post by **Guillaume Piolat** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 4:35 pm

From what I understand, redistributing NKS implies being allowed to redistribute VST2.

I asked once to NI:

Would developping a NKS plugin allow to not use the Steinberg VST SDK, and still have that VST2 compatibility?

Their answer was that "No, NKS is an extension the VST Standard in that you will have to build the NKS Specific features on top of the VST Plugin that you are building." It doesn't bypass licences.

IANAL but it seems without a VST2 agreement you also can't release NKS plug-ins... what happens in 3 years when the VST2 agreement stop?

Xenakios · Post by **Xenakios** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 5:01 pm

Guillaume Piolat wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 4:35 pm IANAL but it seems without a VST2 agreement you also can't release NKS plug-ins... what happens in 3 years when the VST2 agreement stop?

I am quite sure hosts and additional technologies from larger companies like Ableton and NI will have VST3 support in the near future.

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 5:45 pm

Aleksey Vaneev wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:03 pm Such things happen when something wrong happens with the company's inner situation. From my sales polls, Steinberg lost a huge market share, 35% in 10 years. Still leading, but not by a huge margin. I see no relation of dwinding sales and forced VST2 removal, but it's probably one of decisions that tries to enforce "market lead". From technical standpoint and my experience with 3rd party libraries and frameworks, VST3 is not a win, so removal of VST2 may actually have a negative impact on company's PR image. I always expected them to release VST2.5 with some refinements (like totally removing all "deprecated" parts to make SDK light-weight), but that will probably never happen now.

The thing now is what are they going to do for VST4 in the next 10 years. Is it going to be the same story with VST3 ?

All this could have been avoided if they applied some form of Service Evolution strategy. Or as we used to call it before Backward Compatibility

I will quote a well known dev here with some modification of mine to make it relevant.

A well-designed API should aim to support:

Platform independence. (more or less good in VST)
Any plugin should be able to call the API, regardless of how the API is implemented internally and regardless of in what platform the plugin and host are running.

Service evolution. (The main issue in VST is here)
The API should be able to evolve and add functionality independently from plugins. As the API evolves, existing plugins should continue to function without modification. All functionality should be discoverable, so that plugins can fully utilize it.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Tue Oct 23, 2018 5:45 pm

Xenakios wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 5:01 pm
Guillaume Piolat wrote: ↑Tue Oct 23, 2018 4:35 pm IANAL but it seems without a VST2 agreement you also can't release NKS plug-ins... what happens in 3 years when the VST2 agreement stop?
I am quite sure hosts and additional technologies from larger companies like Ableton and NI will have VST3 support in the near future.

Looks like they will have to but it will be a hard transition for NI in particular as NKS is so firmly wedded to VST2.

Selling VST2 after October 2018: Steinberg agreement