Hi, everyone.

A group I was part of in school made a patch in pure data which got noticed by a science center and they expressed interest in expanding on the concept we built and have us continue on it so to say.

So I guess my question is,
Can I (and my group) develop a patch/project for said science center and potentially make money out of it?

In brief ; you can always make money with FLOSS ; restrictions are related to open/close (license) your sources.

PureData is BSD (expr objects also) < https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2019-09/125996.html >.

@Rannug The license of the Pure Data software does not apply to the patches you make. These are legally your intellectual property and you as the author can decide what you want to do with them. I.e. sell, publish without license, publish with license and so on.

Copyright is not license ; interesting story < https://www.r-bloggers.com/how-gpl-makes-me-leave-r-for-python/ >.

< https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL >

IMHO (concerning Pd-vanilla):

1. You can always make money.
2. You can do what you want if you don't publish your work.
3. You can do what you want distributing your work if you don't use GPL externals.
4. You must distribute your work GPL if you use GPL externals.

Am i wrong?

< https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/10345/making-a-standalone-program-from-a-pd-patch/2 >

@Nicolas-Danet Yes, i think if you include externals that are published under the GPL, your code also has to be under the GPL. If you release vanilla patches, i believe there are no restrictions whatsoever, meaning you can release them as proprietary or under any license you wish to. Releasing without license probably falls under proprietary, as you don't grant any permissions. Only fair use may apply here. But i may be wrong with all of that or partly

@ingox Nobody really knows! @Rannug Yes you can.

Thanks for the help

@ingox Not sure if releasing without a license makes your code propriatery. I remember contacting Open Music Labs concerning the license of rePatcher and their answer was that it comes with no license and that I could do whatever I wanted with it.

< https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.fr.html#NoLicense >

@Nicolas-Danet In my layman view, the license provides you the rights that you otherwise don't have. Download and private use should be generally unproblematic, if the code was released publicly. But where would the right for commercial use (in the broadest sense), reuse, modification or republication come from, if not from an explicit license, granting those rights? If you think of Microsoft Windows licenses, you can see that even download and use is generally not permitted without having a license

And i know that in this community it is common practice just to reuse everything and this is of course a good thing

technically speaking, PD patches are open source all the time!? How could you close the source of a running patch? Not sure about the license restrictions of LibPD ?

There was another post about PD licenses: https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/7993/licensing-freeverb-externals-limitations/7

@Rannug I agree mostly with @lacuna..... but.....
******** and @ingox is correcting me so I will change those parts where I was wrong *********
Objects in your patch will have been released with many different licenses.
Some very open, some restricted.
Some might even have patent restrictions, especially some audio objects, and I think also some math objects.
A Pd patch cannot be compiled into an executable, and being open source it is difficult to sell your patch and so difficult to make money from it unless you have considerable legal resources.
Even if that were possible any restrictions would still apply.
If the science centre want to pay you for patch development work that is fine (for you).
You can sell them a license for your work, but not the licenses of authors of the software you have used.
And you cannot incorporate that software and pass it on in your patch unless the author license allows you to do so or you have obtained their permission.
You must include the original author licenses with your patch.
They will then have to deal with the license owners if they want to use them outside the terms of the license.
But as noted above, they cannot protect a Pd patch, so it is a pointless exercise (for them) unless they just want to use it as a free educational tool.
The Pd license can be found in the Pd folder of the distribution.
Licenses for objects and libraries should be included in their folders too...... eg for Gem there is a license from the author and also a GnuGPL.LICENSE.
For most Pd objects you can find the license in the meta file that is included in the help patch for the object.
As @ingox says below, if there is no license that releases copyright then the author retains all copyright.
Take particular note of the "damages" clauses in the Pd license, which you should replicate in any contract you might sign.
And don't take any of this as gospel until @ingox has finished with me.
David.

@whale-av Your post contains so much false information.

If you write a patch or other software, you are the author of that software and it is protected under copyright laws. If you publish that software without giving any license, be the software Open Source or not, nobody has any rights to use it in any way. Only if you as the author grant those rights by providing a license, people can get the rights to use, change or republish the work, depending on the license.

The notion that "Open Source" and "Free license" have anything to do with each other legally, is simply wrong.

That we live in this grey area in this forum, where everybody uses anybodies work even without license and nobody sues is nice, but has no legal implications. If you live in the US, you may evoke the Fair Use doctrine, but that is not the case outside the US.

@ingox So they can license their own work as long as they include the original licences of the software they use and they respect those licenses?
Unfortunately I had taken that as a given that they must include the licenses.
And if they don't include their own license then they cede no rights (of their own)?
David.

@whale-av Basically yes. Using other peoples code as part of your own software obviously complicates things and is usually only possible if this other code is under free license or you have the explicit permission of the author. But then there are different kind of free licenses and they are not necessarily compatible. But if they are, you can combine the code and republish it under your own compatible license.

In case of copy-left licenses like the GPL the case is more clear: Any derivative work must also be copy-left.

Also the whole monetary aspect is not relevant to most free licenses, so you can for example sell software that is licensed under the GPL. In which kind of business model that would make sense is another question, but there is nothing preventing you from doing this and there are examples where this makes perfectly sense

And there are some another aspects that where discussed above and may not be clear in every case:

• If you use a free software to create your own code (e.g. use Pd to create a patch), afaik your code does not have to respect the license of the creation software and you can do with your code whatever you want.
• If you use external code but not directly, by only referencing it as a library that you don't include in your software directly (e.g. writing [cyclone/counter] in your patch), afaik you also don't have to respect the license of that code in all cases. Probably with the GPL you have to respect it and your own code has to be GPLed as well. With the library being under the LGPL you can ignore it and do with your code whatever you want.

But i not completely sure about the two above cases

@ingox Actually, I think everything I have written about passing on licenses is incorrect too as their client has them from their downloads, and all that they will copyright and license is the text files (patches) that they deliver to their client.
It is just an instruction set, like writing a macro for Microsoft Word.
The format belongs to Miller, and will be covered by the Pd license, which you must have to run the program, and which varies depending on the distribution that they use.
Maybe the Pd license for the distribution that they have used to create the patches should be included though.
But as you say, you have accessed the code of objects to create the patch...... so...
Then again, the text file could be written without Pd.
Does knowledge of an object, needed to write the text correctly, obligate the writer?
If I write letter.doc here do I have to upload the Microsoft office license to this forum?
Hmm.
No. But it obligates the reader if they use it.

On the monetary subject, yes for one client, but once it's "out there" you need real resources to protect your copyright.
Continued development can earn a revenue stream though.
A neighbour designs circuitry for mobile phone parts and stays in the game without patents...... through continuous development.
David.

@ingox (IMHO + IANAL) (for two above cases) you are right!