[freepats] MSLP samples

[Roberto]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 11:49:23AM +0500, Nikita Zlobin wrote:
> Hello all.

Hello!

> I have read notes about acceptable licenses and sources, and I have
> both question and proposal about MSLP.
[...]
> License - from first look is not fine:
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Yeah, it is not a free licence.

> But begining of licensing readme (MLSM LICENSE READ ME.txt) has
> following claim (don't mind letter case, just pasted as is):
> 
> IMPORTANT!!! 
> I CHOSE THE 'CC BY-NC' LICENSE TO STOP ANYONE FROM SELLING THE SAMPLES. 
> BUT THE SAMPLES ARE FREE TO USE FOR ANY CREATIVE MUSICAL PURPOSES.
[...]

Stopping anyone from selling the samples is not good. I receive
sometimes email from people using our samples as sound effects in
videogames or multimedia products, or bundled with hardware products,
for commercial purposes. And they are not making music with our samples
but including the samples themselves.

It is indeed discouraging that they don't share a tiny part of their
revenue with us, which will be useful to give a boost to FreePats, but
we've choosen to make our samples under a free license on purpose, and
supporting FreePats will be always optional, not mandatory.

There are other problems too:

- Those samples won't be accepted in free software distributions like
Debian GNU/Linux if they can't be sold.

- Adding an exception like that to a legal text is quite risky, as it
can make the license incompatible with the original, or even
incompatible with itself because the whole terms may self-contradict.
I'm sure it's not the intention of the authors, but they really should
not use CC BY-NC and try to change its meaning.

> As for why I wonder about it. This is only place, where I found samples
> true symphonic bass drum - really big, not even smaller version, more
> suitable for music college student orchestra. It sounds very similar to
> one, used in SSO, whose readme clearly mentions MSLP among sources.

It's a pity :(

We have a pending recording session to record a few orchestral
instruments, but unfortunatelly I don't know when we could create them.