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Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 3:58 pm
by amichail
Are they under a different license from the rest of Audacity?

Can they be used to modify sounds for commercial purposes?

Why the need to mention that they are Apple effects in the menu?

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:15 pm
by billw58
Don't know the answers to the first two questions. As for the third, my guess is that names like "Apple: AUBandpass" are simply passed to Audacity when it queries the OS for available AU effects.

-- Bill

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:41 pm
by steve
amichail wrote:Are they under a different license from the rest of Audacity?
Probably. I presume that they are under the same license as the rest of your operating system, whereas Audacity is GPL.

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:49 pm
by amichail
steve wrote:
amichail wrote:Are they under a different license from the rest of Audacity?
Probably. I presume that they are under the same license as the rest of your operating system, whereas Audacity is GPL.
It's not even clear that they are part of the OS. They might come from Apple sample code for example.

The important thing though is whether I can use these to modify sounds for commercial purposes.

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:03 pm
by steve
Which effects are they?
Is there no indication of the license on the effect interface?

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:12 pm
by amichail
steve wrote:Which effects are they?
Is there no indication of the license on the effect interface?
It says "Manufacturer: Apple" in the dialog boxes for these effects.

Most people are probably not even aware that OS X comes with these effects, so they may wonder where they came from.

Maybe something like this would prevent confusion (if true):

"This sound effect comes with OS X and you may use it to modify sounds for any purpose."

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:44 pm
by steve
I think that for a definitive answer on this you would need to check with Apple, though I would expect that you can use them for commercial work - after all, Apple don't prevent you from using Apple fonts for writing commercial documents.

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 1:56 pm
by kozikowski
Nobody forces you to say "Picture Editing by Photoshop." What you can't do is include Photoshop itself in your product.

Koz

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 3:23 pm
by bgravato
If this is part of the initial MacOS-X package, then the same license agreement that you accepted when you first installed MacOS-X should apply. Read the OS-X license agreement and see if is there any clause that forbids you to use the audio effects for commercial purposes... I doubt it though.

Re: Are Apple effects free software?

Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2011 2:59 am
by kozikowski
Nobody is racing to use on-line software. It's too easy to "own" the users work by clever manipulation of the user agreement.

Written works produced and edited on Word-Squirter® software become the exclusive property of Squirt International -- all rights including international distribution......etc.

There have been several instances of this back-door ownership already.

And since everything is on-line... You can't call the work back to your dumb terminal.

This is the way everything used to be done, except the computer in the middle was in the big room down the hall and if anything went wrong, you could walk down the hall and smack the systems administrator with a broom handle if you needed to.

I liked that broom-handle approach.

Koz