Selling VST2 after October 2018: Steinberg agreement

[vortico]

Why fear them? Is not like they are going to sue small companies and specially single users...

Suing is rare. Companies usually settle out of court between their lawyers.

[sth]

I may be unlucky, or perhaps others were lucky, but I was unsuccessful with my VST2 license agreements. I tried 12/4, after I'm back from the Thanksgiving parties, and got a response 12/11. I had explained that I started my first VST2 plugin back in August, really just testing the waters and making something for myself. At this point I was thinking of releasing it and at the same time found out about this deadline. They responded that they communicated it in advance and were no longer issuing them after the deadline.

Rather unfortunate. As a Linux user I really hate the principles behind this SDK and its licensing, but I bit the bullet because I wanted to make something to help myself make music, and eventually open-source it when I was ready. It's absurd to me that I would not be able to do that without fear of repercussions. Very bad taste in my mouth here.

[Drachenkatze]

I'm wondering: Has there ever a binary version of a VST2 plugin being pulled from the market because it was "not licensed", in like...ever? I mean, all you need to implement VST2 is the knowledge about the OpCodes. There's no binary from Steinberg you link against, which you would need to include to make your plugin work. In my interpretation, the header files defining the opcodes are nothing more than a file format, and reverse engineering file formats for interoperability purposes is legal in the EU.

[WilliamK]

Indeed

[WilliamK]

You can ignore me as I may be totally out of my zone with the following comments. But I would say, Steinberg did wrong with all this nonsense VST2 SDK requirements. So all old VST2 are now illegal to be distributed, specially since the developer is dead, missing or just couldn't get the signed papers IN TIME. Steinberg is wrong, and they should be told that. We should unite and say that, as this is ABSURD. How come people unite for other things but we are here sitting like ducks rushing and praying to get those stupid signed papers from them? We should have a say in this: STEINBERG, THIS IS STUPID!!!!! YOU CAN'T FORCE PEOPLE TO MOVE TO VST3 JUST BECAUSE (typo?). We, UNITED, are larger than you. And WE ARE... but them again I'm a FIRESTARTER, just like the PRODIGY song... So you can ignore this Bipolar crazy guy from Brazil... which, btw, will NEVER sign those stupid papers. They can hunt me down, and I doubt they will, as my country is a legal mess on its own...

[discoDSP]

Take it easy William

[WilliamK]

Noooooo, kill kill kill

[discoDSP]

Thank God you are not living in Europe. I would be scared of being in Steinberg offices and getting a molotov cocktail from the window with a note hanging and a LONG LIVE VST2 message written on it

[S0lo]

I come from a computer engineering background, way before I entered the music dev realm. And it's still my day job to work as networking engineer.

In that matter, we have the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and the IEEE Standards Association. These are generally none-profit organizations supported by several companies in the industry who's job is to define and asses standards and protocols for the benefit of all manufacturers.

In the music industry we have the AMEI (Association of Musical Electronics Industry). The question is, shouldn't this plugin standard business be handed over to them to figure out?

They are already working with the MMA on MIDI 2.0.

[discoDSP]

Looks like a great idea S0lo. VST2 is so big that in my opinion has absolutely no sense to be killed like Steinberg did. But perhaps it should be addressed with VST3, which is being supported right now, and we could avoid the history being repeated again.

[WilliamK]

Thank God you are not living in Europe. I would be scared of being in Steinberg offices and getting a molotov cocktail from the window with a note hanging and a LONG LIVE VST2 message written on it

Yup, that sounds like me.

I'm seriously thinking on creating some new bridge tools to allow vst2 to\from vst3

[discoDSP]

I'm seriously thinking on creating some new bridge tools to allow vst2 to\from vst3

That would be awesome. Even better... a 32-bit VST2 to 64-bit VST3

[WilliamK]

Oh yeah. With JUCE is a bit easier to do, but still a lot of typing. I was also thinking on doing a no-crash bridger, so you would use the bridge: if the plugin crashes, it won't crash the host. It just uses the last saved data and try to recover. I think FL already does that, not sure. The whole work is getting the scanner working and also some sort of database and things like that... I was also thinking on doing a repository for older VST files, for free, or next to free at least. But hey, I'm crazy, so I need to think carefully so I don't spread myself too thin....

Ahhhh, Wusik P2000 should do the 32 bit VST2 to 64 bit VST3. I haven't tested, but it does support that. I only tested with VST2 to VST2 so far.

[discoDSP]

Bliss can host VST2 instruments in AU/VST3 hosts, but that's another history

[S0lo]

Looks like a great idea S0lo. VST2 is so big that in my opinion has absolutely no sense to be killed like Steinberg did. But perhaps it should be addressed with VST3, which is being supported right now, and we could avoid the history being repeated again.

VST2 is indeed too big in terms of adoption

NAMM is almost here. The MMA is going to have a booth at Hall B, #9701. I believe MIDI 2.0 participating companies include Ableton/Cycling ‘74, Art+Logic, Bome Software, Google, imitone, Native Instruments, Roland, ROLI, Steinberg, TouchKeys, and Yamaha.

If someone here is going to NAMM, may be he could discuss the issue with them there. Just like have a chit chat and sense the waters. Who knows, if you could let Steinberg and others sit together, things may happen in a better way than the current state that simply dumps old code.