Jeff Szuhay wrote: > Is all ABC Music source code under GPL? > > (If so, that's a real bummer. An "Artist License" would > be much better for its adoption in commerical products.) > > Is the ABC Music itself under GPL? > > (If so, then I can't use it at all.)
I don't quite understand what your question is and I think you confuse some things here. Are you talking about the "abc musical notation language", as developed by Chris Walshaw? Then the answer would be "mu" <http://www.tuxedo.org/%7Eesr/jargon/html/entry/mu.html>. The abc musical notation language is a public standard, just like ANSI C, IEEE 803.11, HTML 4.1, etc. If you want to write software that uses the abc musical notation, you are free to do so and a lot of people will thank you for it. You can choose to release your software under any license you want, even one that is as restrictive as some commercial vendors nowadays try to introduce. For example, you can use MS FrontPage to write webpages in HTML. So, FrontPage complies with the HTML standard (though I don't know to what degree), but the software itself is not GPLed. But maybe you are talking about software that complies with the abc standard? Then the answer is "it depends"... Some software is published under the GPL (such as abcm2ps and abcMIDI), other packages are not (like Muse and ABC2Win). If you want to write software that uses GPLed code, you are obliged to publish your own package under the terms of the GPL. As suggested, you can negotiate with the authors about using another licensing scheme. However, if you don't want to use GPLed code, you are free to write your own software from scratch that performs the same function and publish it under any license you want. Or are you talking about the tunes that people have transcribed using the abc musical notation language? In that case, it all depends on the transcribers and you should ask them under what terms their work can be used. I hope this answers your question... Happy coding, bert -- Bert Van Vreckem If Bill Gates had a penny for each time Windows crashed... Wait a minute! He does! To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html