GPL for free music+sounds

[Conrad Parker <conradp cse unsw edu au>]

I've advocated elsewhere (mainly on the soundtracker-discuss list)
for the use of the GPL for song files, where a song is constructed
algorithmically from sampled sounds plus score information. In this
instance, I think the score (and possibly also the sounds) could be
considered source, and the constructed song (eg. exported as a WAV
or MP3) is the "program" in GPL lingo.

Similarly in the context of making sound effects, if software like
aube had the ability to save filter settings and configurations then
you could save copies of these and distrubuted them under the GPL
along with the resulting WAV files.

This would have many other advantages, eg. instead of someone saying
"this file is too quiet" they could say "here's a patch to make it
louder". It would also help identify authorship, which aids in
establishing copyright; if I'd been able to provide source for sounds
I made last week, I wouldn't have had people claiming they were
ripped from various movies, games and songs :)

The main advantage for us would be that with free-source licensing
and source aware tools, sounds could be recreated, edited, and evolve
just like free software does now. Even for short sound effects,
making useful edits to the shape of harmonics and filter envelopes
is impossible if all you have is the resulting wav file.

Conrad.