Juce & VST3 License Questions

[bendurso]

Hi! I'm new to Hise and I'm developing my first plugin with Hise with the help of this forum and mainly David's tutorials (thanks David, I'll be joining your Patreon soon). I'm already aware of the Hise license, but I have some doubts regarding Juce and VST3.

1. I understand that Hise uses Juce 6. But the monthly Indie subscription of Juce is for version 7, right? Does it work anyway?

2. Is it necessary to fill out the VST3 application with Steinberg? I'm not going to release VST2 plugins. I think that "Proprietary Steinberg VST 3 license" requires it, and "Open-source GPLv3 license" does not. But I don't know which one corresponds to the plugins exported with Hise.

[Matt_SF]

@bendurso Hi and welcome to the forum.

1. Yes, the JUCE version you're using doesn't matter.

2. Yes, if your goal is to offer/sell VST3 plugins publicly, you'll have to get a distribution license from Steinberg. It is free. VST2 licenses are no longer available anyway.

Regarding GPL licenses, @d-healey could go into the details but long story short :
Going open source means that you won't need a HISE commercial license in order to distribute your plugins but you'll have to make the code source available publicly (basically your project folder).
It means that anybody can contribute to your project, reuse it and redistribute it.

Having a HISE commercial license allows you to distribute 'proprietary' plugins : the project is yours and you don't have to make it available publicly.

[d.healey]

GPL does not require you to make the project publicly available. You must make it available to anyone to whom you have provided a binary version. In practice this usually means publishing it publicly but you don't have to.

[Matt_SF]

@d-healey said in Juce & VST3 License Questions:

GPL does not require you to make the project publicly available. You must make it available to anyone to whom you have provided a binary version. In practice this usually means publishing it publicly but you don't have to.

Ah, indeed you're right. I took a little shortcut here

[bendurso]

@Matt_SF Thank you

The last 2 years I have been creating/selling VST3/AU plugins with Maize Sampler and I understood that it was not necessary to ask Steinberg for distribution license for plugins exported with Maize. Now I'm going to have to fill out that Steinberg form.. Do you think Steinberg could raise any issues if I have already released VST3 plugins publicly?

[Dan Korneff]

@bendurso said in Juce & VST3 License Questions:
Do you think Steinberg could raise any issues if I have already released VST3 plugins publicly?

Technically, yes. Probability: 0%