Does anyone use Waves plugins in Ardour?

Installation & Configuration Linux
#21

Like when @Paul said that he hopes that people respect the license of his software, the fact is that his license choice as a developer plays a huge role in that. Ardour’s license is incredibly fair and (I think) generous. It’s not likely that someone would even feel the need to disrespect it, much less have the audacity to do so when the software is almost outright given to them, or to say the least, is as affordable and non-intrusive as it gets these days. Then you have companies like Apple or Avid, which muscle their way into a position of such that anyone who hopes to work in the industry which they function will get stuck in cases where life is extremely difficult to go through without buying their software, like in the case of the studio professional in which protools is a large industry standard in many of the bigger more influential studios. In that sense, it does sort of borderline on extortion when a company positions themselves as such that they make it an extra challenge to use anything but their software, and then charge an arm and a leg with bothersome protection measures like iloks etc. I think that a developer is a lot less likely to experience having their license disrespected if their licensing policies mutually respects their customers. I have experienced software that was so difficult to install with all the protection that it almost felt as if though I was hacking it, as i wonder if hacking it would have been less of a hassle then doing it legit. Its fair that developers are supported, but also fair that paying customers are not hounded, harassed or cornered into positions in which choosing not to use their software will actually hinder your profession. Hence the reason I boycotted apple, switched to all open source type software with the exception of commercial software whos business practices are fair and honest.

@khaustic Yes. Waves does work in linux. In my experience, most of them work quite well with the exception of some of the newest additions to the collection. Waveshell will not work as i do not know of any linux program that supports shell type plugins. You will need to unwrap the individual plugins from the shell using a utility like shell2vst. If you didnt notice it, I posted a complete walkthrough on pg 1 of the thread (which conversely sparked all this debate about piracy and licensing etc. lol.) Give it a read and feel free if you have questions.

#22

Software developer here, and I agree with absolutely everything every single one of you has said.

Now that that’s settled, has anyone actually got Waves working on Ardour for Windows? Every other VST plugin I have installed shows up in the plugin manager. Waveshell-9.2.dll does not.

#23

Now that ilok is no longer required to use waves, I have managed to get the entire gamut of waves plugins (except a few) working in ubuntu and fedora. I warn anyone who attempts this: rewarding though it is, it is a task that is not for the feint of heart or those shy to techy challenges. That said, the trick is to use something like playonlinux to tweak the settinngs and versions of wine that are used to run the plugins through a bridge. I use airwave vst. I have tried every vst bridge for linux I could dig from the far corners of the internet, and thats the only one that seems to work most of the time with adequate performance. The versions of wine and settings that you use will vary from system to system, and they will likely be different through the install process to the finish line. The waves installers tend to be finnicky and require a different set of libraries etc. to run than the plugins themselves. If one version of the installer won’t work, it can be helpful to try with other versions (if waves will let you get your hands on them.) After the painstaking process of managing to get the plugins successfully installed, the process is far from over. The next thing is to unwrap the waveshells using shell2vst. Copy shel2vst and shell2vst64 into the folders which contain the waveshell.dll files respectively.l Break out your windows command line chops, cause you’ll need it for this step. the syntax will look something like

cd path\to\wine\prefix\VSTPlugins\Wavesshellfolder
shell2vst “path\to\waveshellfile.dll”

If you do it right, it will output a list of plugins that are extracted. Do this to each shell that ends in a .dll, but do not do it to the vst3 files as they are not supported yet and only complicate matters later.

While I am not one to condone piracy, sometimes the registration process can be more difficult then the actual installing, and indeed can be the snag that halts the whole operation. Wine just does not seem to like licensing programs for VSTs (or maybe the other way around,) so if you have actually paid for a plugin and lack of platform support on the companies end inhibits you from using software that you payed for fair and square on your platform of choice, I see that as unfair. In such an instance, it is possible to find cracks and patches to lift the restrictions of licensing programs, but this should only be used as a last resort if all else fails and you legitimately own the software. In some cases, the registration will go smoothly and this is not needed.

Ok, now that we are installed and registered, the next task is to clear the day for entering the links from the plugins into your bridge. Airwave uses a .conf file to hold its settings, so if you are savy, you can automate this process with clever scripting and editing of text files. I kicked it off with something like

cd /path/to/unwrapped/plugins

for each in $(ls | tr \ _); do
echo “$each” | tr _ \ ;
done >textfile-list-of-waves

This gives you a nice tidy list of every plugin in the folder in a text file… I’ll let you figure out how that is useful.

Ok, now that the bridge links are set up, it is time to fire up our DAW and get scanning.

This will take FOREVER. I would say bring a good book, but you actually have to watch it because some plugins may get stuck or require additional tweaking to work, and if you just hit go and walk away, you’ll come back to a hung meter. For me, it makes the most sense to just remove the .so link of any misbehaving plugin so as to allow the scanning process to do a full pass and register all of the plugins that work straight away. If theres a heartbreak along the way in the form of a plugin you can’t live without, you can always go back later and finagle with it until it works… though you’ll want to bring some hair-dye to cover the grey hairs that you will form in the process, and also accept that while most things will work, there are going to be at least a couple that just mess the whole jackbus up nomatter what you seem to try.

This has been for all those underdog linux musicians that watch the internet obsessively for news of more linux support but finally decide to take matters into their own hands. I hope my days of misery have saved you some frustration and allowed you use of a monumental plugin pack in an OS that doesnt stalk your family.

Im happy to answer questions, but I am not the most social person these days and don’t check my email much… but if I see someone in need I’ll respond.

Cheers all. Keep on making music and giving proprietary OS’s the middle finger.

#24
..so if you have actually paid for a plugin and lack of platform support on the companies end inhibits you from using software that you payed for fair and square on your platform of choice, I see that as unfair..
So you paid for a product that is specifically for a particular operating system, and because it doesn't work on something else that it was never intended to, that's unfair? if you buy a petrol car, and it turns out it doesn't work if you fill it with diesel, is that unfair too?
.. In such an instance, it is possible to find cracks and patches to lift the restrictions of licensing programs, but this should only be used as a last resort if all else fails and you legitimately own the software...
As a commercial developer, I find that offensive. They should not be used at all. (I would hope that the ardour devs do not consider their forum an appropriate place for such 'advice' however well intentioned). There are plenty of free linux plug-ins and even commercial plugins for linux. If you need to use Windows software, the best option is to use Windows. If you need a linux version of a commercial plug-in, politely suggest it to the companies that make the software, rather than encouraging people to hack around the licensing and such.
#25

“if you buy a petrol car, and it turns out it doesn’t work if you fill it with diesel, is that unfair too?”

Unfair? no… but then, is it morally wrong if I decide modify the engine a bit to suit my needs? Come to think of it, diesel engines can run biodiesel, making them much less hazardous to the environment, much like there are a lot of real reasons why consumers and developers alike should be running like hell from companies like Apple (Don’t get me started!) So then wouldn’t it in fact be morally righteous to make such modifications, while being morally lazy to just go out and buy a petrol engine?

“As a commercial developer, I find that offensive. They should not be used at all.”

Why should it offend you that someone bought your product at your asking price and likes it sooo much that they act with enough enthusiasm to make it work on a new platform, while saving you the trouble of meeting the market demand yourself? If anything, mega corporations who use their increasingly aggressive business tactics to pinhole consumers and developers into dependencies on them, while free and better options exist, is kind of offensive as well, no? It’s the ol’ “jailbreak” argument: If I legitimately own a phone, shouldnt I be able to modify it however I want? If I sold you my diesel car but rigged it to only drive where I say it’s ok to drive, wouldn’t that kind of be even more offensive?

“If you need a linux version of a commercial plug-in, politely suggest it to the companies that make the software, rather than encouraging people to hack around the licensing and such.”

   -said the guy who started this thread eleven years ago :-/

In an ideal world, developers would not be beholden to capitalism. All the innovation that went into clever licensing protocols that make life a pain in the ass for thieves and customers alike would have gone into the innovation itself. If we are going to get on our high-horses here to speak of righteous morals and lofty principles, then the world should be motivated by the advancement and prosperity of mankind as a whole instead of having everyone get offended by imaginary zeros and ones on a digital screen… fighting amongst themselves to compete fiercely in an economy only to still feel lack each day. Just because what I say is completely unrealistic in our lifetime doesn’t change the fact that we all know it to be truth.

As a professional musician, I live pretty modestly because people have been ‘sharing’ music for quite a while now… ofcourse ‘sharing’ is now known as ‘pirating,’ and either way, the musician is now the first profession to embrace the bright future of economics whereby giving your work away is the norm. Developers are next. rather they like it or not… this is also observably true. honestly, if people steal my music, im flattered before I’m offended. Is it me or does this whole money thing bring out the absolute worst in everyone?

As a developer, I imagine that this would resonate with you. As a developer youd also probably be eager to agree that linux has many advantages over windows and os-x. The fact that your on an ardour forum suggests that you probably use linux. And finally, as a developer, you also probably know that the only reason that the vast majority of development is for commercial platforms is purely money driven. As an artist and a developer, i know that the most legendary works of art and technology were labors of love… “Ardours” if you will… and being told that I can only color inside the lines because bill gates needs another yacht actually offends me! lol.

I get that we all need to eat, which is why I said “buy the software and support the developer”… but dont lose sight of the fact that our need to constantly be chasing dollars is something we are forced into, and with that perspective, I’d imagine it would be hard to be offended when someone sticks it to the system a little. I suppose I am ranting now, so I will cut to my point.

I am sorry if you are offended, as I meant no offense or disrespect. I only mean to share the fruits of countless hours of my work with the community of a free DAW, and purpose the only working solution to an eleven year old thread. What is black and white changes according to where you shine your light. As a developer, I hope you enjoy developing for the love of your craft without taking the numbers too personally.

Cheers

#26
Why should it offend you that someone bought your product at your asking price and likes it sooo much that they act with enough enthusiasm to make it work on a new platform, while saving you the trouble of meeting the market demand yourself?
What offends me are your comments about pirating software:
...In such an instance, it is possible to find cracks and patches to lift the restrictions of licensing programs, but this should only be used as a last resort if all else fails and you legitimately own the software...
It isn't ok to do this, no matter how well intentioned, or what your motivations may be.
#27

@th8a: it isn’t acceptable to use these forums to advocate in any way for behaviour that fails to respect the intent of the license under which software was released.

You are welcome to your opinions about the fairness (or otherwise) of Waves not releasing their plugins for your chosen platform, but Ardour also relies on people respecting the license we chose to use. Please show the people at Waves and elsewhere the same respect and honor their licensing choices by not suggesting ignoring them. It is just wholly inappropriate. Perhaps I’d be personally happier if Waves released all their plugins under the GPL - though perhaps not. But it doesn’t matter: they made their choice, just as the Ardour project made its choice, and now people need to respect it.

It is EXTREMELY difficult to make a living as an independent software developer, especially in the audio world where there is intense competition and a widespread belief that everything should be cheap or free. I do know people (even my own brother) who are willing to make a very small amount of money in order to live the simple, stripped down life that works for them. Many of us, however, are also participating in a long list of the usual social structures and conventions, which means that an overly idealistic attitude towards the connection between money and software makes life difficult, and sometimes even miserable. Proprietary software developers, for better or worse, have chosen to not to follow your ideas about how things ought to work (“labor of love”, “sharing”, “i’m flattered [ by stealing]”, “giving away your work is the norm”). They have real lives to live, and real opinions too. Please respect them, their opinions and their licenses.

#28

@paul I do respect and support the developers and apologize if I have given the impression that I don’t respect them. I also realize that my ideals and opinions are not the end-all-be-all authority of what is right, nor is anyone’s opinion the absolute authority.

‘It isn’t ok to do this, no matter how well intentioned, or what your motivations may be.’

This I must disagree with respectfully. It is not my way of thinking that rules are just simply because they are written, or that even just laws have no possibility for extenuating circumstances. That said, I can see why you say it in this instance and can appreciate the intention to defend the skilled people who are seemingly ripped off at a whole-sale level.

My comment about ‘giving ones work away for free’ is not meant to represent my personal opinion on the matter, but simply my observations. People will fight and fight against the idea of free art and information while others will fight for it, and it’s anyone’s guess what the best attitude towards it will be… however in observing the direction things seem to be going, it would seem that its getting harder and harder for developers and artists to maintain lucrative business models. My best guess is that it’s ultimately easier to change with the times and adapt however need be, but the plight of the starving artists and developers is certainly not lost on me. Im in the same boat as you guys at the end of it all.

I grew up in a family that is of a long line of musicians. When I was a kid, session work and gigs were a way to put food on the table. By the time my skills were ready to get out there as a professional, quincy jones himself stated in an interview that “there is no more music business. Everyone just gets their music for free these days.” I am still in debt, paying back the amount it cost me to formally train myself as a musician… I have dedicated my whole life, burning the boat at shore and sacrificing any chance at a normal stable career in the name of my passion to be a musician and carrying on the family torch. For us musicians in the current market, its make it or break it… and all because of the innovation of p2p sharing platforms. As hard as piracy has hit developers, I think it’s safe to say that it hit musicians even harder and I am both a musician and a developer… so trust me, I get it, and it has not exactly favored me in a financial sense. It’s just the eb and flow of changing times, I suppose…

Furthermore, I am not advising nor advocating piracy. I am advocating support of development while advocating and encouraging developers to answer the calls of those who support them. Those who make peaceful migration impossible will make violent migration inevitable. The linux audio community has been all but begging and waiting patiently for major developers to throw them the slightest bone for over a decade now… Its not really a secret that cracked plugins exist in a rampant way, and there are people out there far less sympathetic and respectful than me. If a demand goes unattended long enough, people will give up and take matters into their own hands… Linux is starting to gain major headway in recent times and I would think that a company like waves would be shooting themselves in the foot by giving no support to a small but powerful group of potential customers and developers. The pirates of Nassau were mostly former servants of the crown and freed slaves, if you get my meaning… but I digress as there is bound to be shades of gray on all sides of this discussion.

" If you need to use Windows software, the best option is to use Windows"

Again, I am going to have to respectfully disagree here. For one thing, in no universe that I can dream of is using Windows a viable option in my opinion. I would not want to open myself up to the world of design flaws and security risks that comes with using windows, nor do I wish to pay absurdly marked up hardware costs for an aesthetic that brands me as a fruit, just to participate in a social broadcasting of my status with no real technical advantages and a SLEW of corporate imposed costs and limitations with no real agreeable justification. I also do not approve of Apple’s aggressive marketing ploys which many would argue are beyond immoral, perhaps outright evil. (you are dangerously close to getting me started on apple!) For now it suffices to say that many good honest developers and consumers have been cut off from being able to develop for alternative platforms while affording their overhead because of such cut-throat strategies… And while I respect developers, I cannot accept such flagrant disrespect towards me and this community. I do not wish to buy into it - especially not while people who work in apple sweatshops are throwing themselves off of factory rooftops on a regular basis. (look it up.)

“politely suggest it to the companies that make the software, rather than encouraging people to hack around the licensing and such.”

Is not the entirety of the WINE project just a hack to run programs on a platform which it was never intended for?

I appreciate the integrity of this forum, but such integrity cuts both ways at times.

Here i go ranting again… I guess this is a hot topic for me. I’ll wrap it up by simply saying I dont advise or advocate piracy. I mean no disrespect but infact I mean the utmost respect and especially gratitude for projects like Ardour and Waves, and finally would like to point out there is sometimes a thin line between being morally upstanding and putting on a storm trooper outfit to go blindly shoot down the rebels for the empire.

When all is said and done, love you guys. If you wanna get waves working in linux I figured it out, and don’t let that steer you towards anything you don’t feel right about. As an educator, It’s good to be aware of possibilities even if you have no intention of exploring them.

Cheers!

#29

sorry, one final thought here… but is your moral qualm with theft and piracy, or with the technical altering of a software program? I think the key thing that is being overlooked here is that buying the software from the developer and altering it’s functions to get it to work properly is very diffferent from outright pirating it. Piracy protection is there to ensure that the developer is paid for their work… So if you paid for the work and alter it for your own personal use, can that really equated to piracy? To my understanding, piracy is when you remove the restrictions without paying for the right to do so, then participate in the distribution of unlocked software to others who also have no valid license. Paying the creator for a license is in essence paying for the right to unlock the software. Once you own a license legitimately, what should it matter if I unlock it with a damn chainsaw? the point is that its not being stolen or illegally distributed.

so if we can agree that purchasing a software license entitles you to unlock the use of the software in one way or the other, then your qualm at that point is not with theft or piracy, but with alteration of code and platform loyalty… Many would say you cant steal what you already purchased, or 'no harm no foul… ’ That’s fair if you really object to the act of lock picking as a principle, but then you might rethink using a coat hanger to unlock your car the next time you lock your keys inside, as breaking locks goes against your principle… And if you wanna talk EULA etc, then why is using WINE for any windows app immune to your principle, as it enables users to run programs on a platform that its developers never intended? Apple lost the jailbreak battle in court, so even case law would support what im saying here. I’d just like to point out that at the end of the day, are we shaming the act of theft and piracy, or are we shaming the act of lock picking? What I suggested as a last resort is more along the lines of lock picking. A locksmith commands locks, which grants him the power to steal things, yes, but if he uses that power only for good, he is not a criminal or dishonorable man, he is a service provider who may one day help you out of a situation involving a malfunctioning lock. Just saying…

#30
but is your moral qualm with theft and piracy, or with the technical altering of a software program? You have to consider that both may be a violation of the license, depending upon the particular license terms and applicable laws. For example some licenses do not permit reverse engineering (except to the extent mandated by applicable laws). If you really want to "Keep on making music and giving proprietary OS's the middle finger" then go ahead, it's your choice, that's fine - but surely it's better to do this by using free software, with a permissive license that allows you to do exactly what you want to do with the software, and perhaps contribute something back and improve it in the process, rather than to publicly advocate a potential violation of the license you agreed to when you purchased / installed the software? There's something at odds between a clearly passionately held belief that you should be able to do whatever you want with software, and yet continuing to use a commercal product which may not afford you those freedoms.
#31

I don’t actually care about distinctions between “lock picking” versus “theft”. What I know is that when I create something and release it to the world, I do so on the hope and expectation that the world will honor the intent of the way I choose to release it. If I release it only for the Haiku operating system, in binary only format, then I hope and expect that the world will not try to hack the executable to make it work on Linux or Windows. If I choose to release it as source code under the GPL then I hope and expect that the code will not be incorporated into a proprietary application.

The developers of proprietary software are programmers just like me. I expect that the intent of their release decisions be honored, just as I hope and expect that mine are too. If they didn’t release it for Linux, then that’s their choice. If they didn’t release it for Windows, that’s their choice. I cannot see how any one expects people to follow the GPL at the same time as advocating for hacks/tinkering/whatever to get around proprietary developers release decisions.

#32

@mike Well stated.

“surely it’s better to do this by using free software, with a permissive license that allows you to do exactly what you want to do with the software, and perhaps contribute something back and improve it in the process,”

Agreed. No argument there…

I suppose we’re now getting into the hair splitting details, and in the interest of honesty I have to admit that I haven’t read the Waves EULA in it’s entirety recently enough to recall exactly what their policies are regarding alteration or reverse engineering… I would imagine that the language used there would require some kind of expert to lay it all out for us in the context of this instance which could perhaps be called a ‘gray area.’ If I called Waves and explained this to them, I’m not sure they’d see the trouble as a good use of time. lol. That said, if we are debating principle here, then yes, I suppose you are right and I would have to agree with what you are saying. Since my lifestyle shift of migrating to linux from OSX, (similar to a pig farmer going vegan,) I make it a point to stick to open source tools as much as possible and even hand rig many of my effects and synths using tools like puredate, which I am currently using in developing my own series of tools and tutorials to gift to the community under a free license.

My use of commercial tools is mostly a result the of fact that I am a working professional in music, and most musicians are not developers or all that tech savvy, so they tend to use exclusively commercial software. In many cases, (cough Apple) It is made intentionally difficult to interface with proprietary software in a cross platform sense, while still maintaining a reasonably functionable workflow - particularly in the case where each party is using different DAWs. Much like living without money may be principally desired by some, but impossible if you plan to stay in the big city, using only non-commercial software is extremely difficult in a professional world where 99% of the time, others are using something like protools or Logic. Much like a starving vegan at a family bbq in rightwing USA, sometimes you just have to be practical - especially when others are counting on you and your skills to realize their vision. As @paul touched on earlier, some of us are cut out to be GNU warriors and some of us are cut out lead a more practical lifestyle, it is true that we can each get away with our own ideas when it involves ourselves, but when working with others becomes the task, we have all had to swallow our pride and do what is practical to some degree. If you have ever entered a studio session with a common setup and pull a complex puredata patch on the screen, or enter anything in a terminal, then you might know what feels like to be stared at as if you were an alien who flew to a bus stop to pick up passengers in your spaceship. I cant expect everyone to be willing to tackle such learning curves in the prime of their careers… so there we are, parking our spaceship and pulling out the keys to the bus so that everyone may have a pleasant ride and arrive safely at the destination.

Everyone here makes valid points in a practical sense, and in a practical sense, I have no real choice but to agree… but therein lays the point to which I allude: Say what you will about my Ideals or gray area methods… however it should be pointed out while you all have a good sense of what is practical right now, in the bigger picture, I am the only one at the moment conveying ideals that do not tell anyone else what they are or are not allowed to do, whilst remaining functional and productive in an environment where others entertain a wide variety of conflicting ideals or ‘company policies’ that impose real limitations on others in some way or other, even when others are doing no harm to anyone. Limiting ones potential for the sake of maintaining systems, structures or protocols of a theoretical nature to the degree that it alters the physical abilities of one’s expression and accomplishment could be a textbook definition for the word “impractical,” particularly when looked at in the grand scheme.

It’s nice talking with you all and I do love a good debate!
Cheers

#33

@paul So then you are not a fan of WINE or Crossover etc?

#34

@paul

“I cannot see how any one expects people to follow the GPL at the same time as advocating for hacks/tinkering/whatever to get around proprietary developers release decisions.”

I think that ‘hacks/tinkering’ tends to get a bit of a bad wrap. The truth is, I have only been in the world of software and hardware development for a short while compared to someone like you, or compared to my time as a musician. To learn much of what I now know about coding and patching together synths and effects from old recycled junk TVs, discarded electronics and AVR boards was by being the kind of person who would tear things apart to see what is inside. It wasnt about being malicious or disrespecting anyone, it was about learning a skill to empower myself to create things and salvaging/recycling things that otherwise go to waste. Hacking and tinkering could be likened to martial arts in that learning and practicing these skills can give you the kind of power that makes you potentially dangerous, but also can make you a force of good, or a force to defend others against those who would abuse such skills/practices. It’s all about intention in that sense.

Secondly, it’s quite understandable to hope that people respect your own decisions and wishes… but to ‘expect’ it might be creating a rather large space that could be filled with disappointment. In my experience, I have found that the attitude of ‘hope for the best; prepare for the worst’ tends to make sleeping easier at night. When dealing with something like releasing music or software to the www, it’s a tall order to suppose that what people at large do with your work can be controlled. A problem is something you have the ability to solve. A condition that thinks for itself simply is what it is, like it or not. Im not saying that to be rude. I say it as it is only true.

Now, if someone does something with another’s work that actually undermines them, steals from them, damages them in any way, then of course that person has the right to seek recourse… But if someone downloads a program and hacks and tweaks it beyond recognition, but does not release it or exploit it, but simply learns from it or uses it for their own personal purpose, Then that is no one’s business but that person. In other words, what I do with software on my computer is my business. I would hope and expect just as you do that no one assert over me what I can or can’t do with my own property. As long as its for personal use only, it’s of no consequence to anyone else anyway.

I suppose it could be said that your sentiment cuts both ways. On one hand, the developer wants his release decisions respected, on the other hand the end user wants his needs and personal freedom of how he chooses to use his own equipment respected. What’s the answer to it all? Your guess is as good as mine… but I find that life is easier when I focus my upsets on things I can actually control vs the things that are what they are beyond me. The way my parents, grandparents and great grandparents conducted their business is gone. The way its looking, software and gaming is the next to feel the wave change… and when 3d printers become more commonplace, tools, clothing designs, plastic parts etc will follow suit, and by the time we are ol geezers, the way the whole world does business will likely be unrecognizable to the way it is today. I suppose we can choose to be upset or offended by that, or we can choose to embrace it and adapt gracefully. To each their own.

Thanks again for your work. Ardour is a great project and a powerful DAW that is made available to everyone for love over gain. That shows and is something I personally admire.
Cheers!

#35
On one hand, the developer wants his release decisions respected, on the other hand the end user wants his needs and personal freedom of how he chooses to use his own equipment respected. What's the answer to it all?

There’s no mystery: the user who wants to be able to tinker, or make copies to give to friends, should ensure that they use only the work of developers who gave them the freedom to do so.

#36

While I will never advocate for piracy (that is run a program without the legal right to do so because you bought^Wlicensed it), I am in favor of reverse-engeneering and other kind of similar actions for interoperability purposes. Note that in several countries there is a legal right to tinker with a (binary only) program for educational or interoperability reasons, and I’m very happy to live in one of those countries (which also doesn’t recognize software patents even if some people succeeded in obtaining some anyway by tricking the office into thinking they were not).
Having bought a program and using a crack on in in order to force it to run on another operating system is not piracy to me. And it doesn’t deprive the developer of his needed money to live. That the developer cannot control what I do with the software I own should be the rule, as is the rule that a hammer manufacturer cannot prevent me to do whatever I want with my hammer (including reselling it).
The real problem here is IMHO the fact that most software is licensed, not sold, in what I consider a scamming scheme devised by software manufacturers a long time ago (and that’s almost exactly what prompted RMS to react back in the day). That scheme is now tried by an awful lot of markets, including books or music, and I don’t find it very fun that they essentially want to kill the used aftermarket and even often require users to buy one version of the song for the house and one for the car. And fair use or private copies are dead (even though we still pay a “privace copy” fee on most storage devices, in France at least).
The GPL is not affected by this because it doesn’t regulate usage at all (you can do what you want) but only distribution.

Again, stomping on the legal rights of the initial developer to run a program you didn’t buy is not right (either morally or legally). Cracking a program you bought to circumvent a problem you have with it (and not activate a feature you didn’t pay for) is morally right, and legally right in several countries. Mixing up the two in the above arguments is not helpful IMHO.

#37

So if you consider a situation where a commercial developer sells you the license to use a piece of software on a particular machine, as is not uncommon, and you chose to purchase a copy locked to that machine, would you then assume you then have the right to take a pirated copy without (or disable) such restrictions, and perhaps run it on another machine? And would this not be analogous to saying ‘because I bought this tin of beans, I obviously have the right to as many free extra tins as I need…’ You may not agree with such a licensing policy, in which case you can chose not to agree with it by not buying the software and not entering into the agreement in the first place. Reverse engineering for certain purposes is permitted under some laws, but my understanding of that (with the obvious caveat that I am not a lawyer etc) would be that reverse engineering for compatibility purposes, or to ensure compatibility, if it is permitted, would not involve deliberately removing restrictions or changing functionality. In other words, you might be within your rights to modify the software to make it work, but only if the copy protection and other functionality also works as intended.

#38

No. If you bought it for one machine, you get to run it on one machine. What could be argued is that a lot of such restricting licenses / lock systems don’t take into account the case where your machine died and you need to build another, or even sometimes the software locks because you changed your hard-drive (e.g. for an SDD) or video card or sometimes as little a change as adding an HDD. In such case, if contacting the developer doesn’t help solving the issue, I think you are entitled to crack the protection, but that is already not so white and black so I’m not advising you do that.

A similar train of thought would hint that if you change your OS from Windows to Linux, you might have the right to use whatever mean is needed to make your software work on Linux, but that (at least morally) it wouldn’t be right if you want to dual-boot and use the software both in Windows and Linux. Again, it can be muddy watters, since we are treading upon subtleties in machine vs user vs instance vs whatchamallit license types. Note that most small developer studios have a down-to-earth approach on that (even Mixbus for instance) where none of this applies because they are genuinely helpful in cases where you change your machine or loose your license ID or similar. In my experience, that’s big devs who rack a lot of money who have a very hard stance that borders on extortion, like Avid, Adobe or Apple.

As for your last statement, I an not a lawyer either, but I don’t think that you are required to leave the copy protection intact if that one is hindering interoperability. In fact, I’m pretty sure I read about cases (as in court) that were about that, and were won by the « infringer ».

#39

Personally I don’t think advocating the breaking of copy protection is ever an appropriate remedy, however ‘morally’ justified someone may believe it to be. By far the best option if you want to modify or otherwise change the software for whatever purpose is of course to use software provided under a permissive license which allows such changes. If you want to ensure compatibility, the best option is to use a product designed for the purpose.

Note that most small developer studios have a down-to-earth approach on that (even Mixbus for instance) where none of this applies because they are genuinely helpful in cases where you change your machine or loose your license ID or similar

As just such an independent developer, my company provides commercial software which is designed to work natively on linux, so modification should not be necessary - under a very flexible license - so you are not locked to just one machine (and I personally spend a significant amount of my out of hours support time - I hope helpfully - resolving issues for users who have lost their license IDs or software after wiping their machine to perform some OS (re)install / ‘upgrade’ or other without a backup). I still would not want someone advocating breaking the copy protection or terms of the license.

#40

Of course, I would recommend to vote with our wallet in the first place and never ever buy anything from vendors that require iLoks or similar (Autocad being a famous case back in the day, with a parallel port dongle IIRC). And favor vendors that already create software that is tailored to the users needs, so yes, I would recommend OvertoneDSP. In fact, I myself very much apply that principle so my previous argument was solely on a philosophical point of view. I never was plagued by the problem since I’m under Linux for so long that I was too young to buy anything of real value when I was on Windows (I switched before being 18yo). The most expensive software I owned back in the day was Visual Basic (for Windows 3.1 IIRC) and it was gifted to me by my dad for my 12th or 13th anniversary (maybe 11th, I don’t really remember).

But users who bought from other less virtuous vendors before understanding their mistake shouldn’t be doomed for their honest blunder either, and some software is very expensive and/or doesn’t have suitable replacements for Linux (yet). The fact that CrossOver is flourishing is a testimony to that IMHO. In the realm of audio plugins, I think the change is coming slowly but surely, led by companies like yours or Harrison, and indeed the need to commit to badly behaving companies is disappearing.