Do Expansions Need Licensing?

[Casmat]

Hey!

I have a general question about HISE licensing. I'm building a player plugin which would be released for open source with all source code on github.The player however would have expansions. These expansions would be sold on our site for a price, and some would be free. The thing is that making a expansion that is paid, it can't be opensource since the sample files would be in that expansion. Would it be ok to have everything in the expansion opensource except for sample files? And would this also mean that a JUCE license is required? If it changes anything, I may add a licensing system to the plugin itself where the plugin and our website would connect with each other, which I believe is possible with HISE? When a user purchases a expansion from our woo commerce powered store, they'd be given a license key to import to the plugin and the plugin would authenticate and allow the expansion along with sample files be able to use. Would this licensing basically encrypt the files and make it unnaccesable to users until registered, allowing me to release expansions opensource? either way, does HISE by default encrypt expansions since I had saw encryptions settings in the project files when enabling expansions, and would it protect against someone sharing sample files from their pc files after authorizing the license? How do you guys manage this and set up a way to securely sell sample libraries?

Thanks!

[d.healey]

@Casmat Samples can be released under a different license to the software.

[Christoph Hart]

If you want to publish the source code of the player plugin in order to comply to the GPL license you have to also publish the encryption key which renders the licensing scheme pretty pointless.

How do you guys manage this and set up a way to securely sell sample libraries?

Get a license. Or use GPL if you don't mind that people will share your libraries (you can still sell them and if you offer a more convenient way to access your stuff then it's still commercially viable.

[Casmat]

@Christoph-Hart thanks David and Christoph! Definitely something I’d need to think about seeing this