>From the STK web site


"Legal and Ethical Notes

This software was designed and created to be made publicly available for
free, primarily for academic purposes, so if you use it, pass it on with
this documentation, and for free. If you make a million dollars with it,
give us some. If you make compositions with it, put us in the program notes.

Some of the concepts are covered by various patents, some known to us and
likely others which are unknown. Many of the ones known to us are
administered by the Stanford Office of Technology and Licensing. The good
news is that large hunks of the techniques used here are public domain. To
avoid subtle legal issues, we will not state what's freely useable here, but
we will try to note within the various classes where certain things are
likely to be protected by patents."

------

The STK documentation claims that it is an "open source" library but it does
not meet fundamental aspects of the open source definition such as granting
the right to charge a few for distribution.  Sourceforge requires that all
software components that we distribute meet the requirements of the OSI open
source definition:

http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

Therefore, my conclusion is that we should stop distributing the STK-wrapper
opcodes in binary form and we should remove the source code from the Csound
download page.  We could still supply the STK wrapper source file and allow
users to build their own module, but it should not be on the Sourceforge
site in binary form.

Furthermore, the assertion of patent rights by Stanford over unknown
portions of STK without the grant of any license to use those patests makes
it extremely dangerous to use!  I think that the authors of STK and their
respective universities should be taken to task over this.  They are
academic researchers and institutions.  They should be promoting the free
usage and expansion of the knowledge that they "create", not placing
impediments on it.

Anthony Kozar
anthonykozar AT sbcglobal DOT net
http://anthonykozar.net/


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