Thanks for the clarification. I had talked with Barry Vercoe myself about
this and gotten substantially the same answer, thought briefer. I do embed
Csound source code in my applications JCsound, AXCsound, and Silence, but
these are not commercial products and I do direct users to the MIT copyright
notice.

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Scheirer 
To: Michael Gogins ; Larry Troxler 
Cc: csound@maths.ex.ac.uk 
Date: Thursday, February 25, 1999 9:24 AM
Subject: The Csound license


>>I don't think Csound is actually public domain. I think the original
>>copyright is still in force. Correct me, Vercoe or ffitch, if I'm wrong!
>
>I'm neither of these gentlemen, but I recently had a conversation
>with Barry on this issue.  I'll try to explain it to the best
>of my understanding.  Disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer, and not
>employed by MIT's Office of Intellectual Property (thank heavens).
>If you really want to push on the edges of the Csound license,
>you should consult a lawyer and talk to MIT directly about it.
>
>Csound is not in the public domain.  The source code is provided
>as a service to the community and is freely usable for personal,
>educational, or research purposes.  Thus, the extensions and
>add-ons that have been developed are well within the spirit of
>the Csound license, and the Media Lab encourages continued
>development as a research and music-making tool.
>
>What you *can't* do is embed public Csound or reuse code from
>public Csound in a commercial product.  The license does not
>give you permission to do this.  Thus, the Csound license is
>more restrictive than GPL, which explicitly allows commercialization
>as long as any extensions are also GPL'ed.  The "derivative
>products" clause means that MIT would also frown upon trying
>to take a signficant chunk of the public Csound code and
>use it to build some other sort of system, even if it weren't
>for sale.  But as long as it is still Csound, add-ons
>and improvements are welcome.
>
>Selling music or other sounds made with Csound is permissible.
>Selling other tools that interoperate with Csound is also
>permissible.  The restrictions only apply to the Csound source
>code itself.
>
>The reason for restrictions on commercial application is that
>certain Media Lab sponsors have given money to us in exchange
>for exclusive commercial rights.  If we allowed anyone else to
>commercialize the Csound code, it would violate the contracts
>that we signed with those sponsors.
>
>Our SAOL implementation is released until a different
>agreement -- we've placed that code in the public domain,
>and you can do anything you want with it, including sell it
>to your neighbors or re-use it in products.  It's important
>restrictions that we must unfortunately continue to apply
>to Csound.
>
>Best,
>
>  -- Eric
>
>+-----------------+
>|  Eric Scheirer  |A-7b5 D7b9|G-7 C7|Cb   C-7b5 F7#9|Bb  |B-7 E7|
>|eds@media.mit.edu|      < http://sound.media.mit.edu/~eds >
>|  617 253 0112   |A A/G# F#-7 F#-/E|Eb-7b5 D7b5|Db|C7b5 B7b5|Bb|
>+-----------------+
>
>