At the moment, the primary goals are discussed on a web-archived mailing list.
You can also post to the list via the newsgroup.
At the moment, there are ten mailing list subscribers. Six of them have introduced themselves.
From their introductions, one can see, that most of them are mainly creating instant music, e.g. tracker or midi stuff, and that they are looking for a way to distribute this music in a free-software-like way. Live music seems less common.
As one of the first steps, we should define the term "free music". It should be related to the term "free software" as defined by either the FSF or The Debian Projekt as much as possible. Maybe we'll find some points that have to be changed for music.
The results of these thoughts could result in a manifesto. After that, we could try to adopt all applicable principles of free software on music.
The transition of the free software principles mentioned above could include the following things:
We could either set up one license for almost any purpose Licence (GNU-style), or deal with several licenses with different levels of protection (Debian-style)
In the later case, we need guidelines (similar to the DFSG), to define what licenses we conseder "free". We should also use a classification system (maybe similar to the Debian one).
We should try to adopt all free software criteria, whenever they make sense (see section "Problems" below). Some additional stuff will have to be added. The result will define the term "free music". The following ideas have been uttered, and still need to be discussed:
The origin of the code, if unknown, may become a legal problem. Therefore, a license could require that the code origin must be mentioned.
Whether the type of media nor the type of data should be restricted. (E.g. 1.If the license requires that certain text files have to be copied along with the song, it becomes impossible to copy it to a compact cassette. 2. If a license for a midi file only allows derived midi files, it does not allow to make MP3s from it.)
The license should have the most possible wide range of use. (e.g. a license for any kind of art)
The license should allow any thinkable form of presentation. (Free software licenses usually do not allow radio broadcasting, because it is not necessary for a computer program to be read out by a radio announcer.)
The license should allow musicians to make a living from selling and performing their music. However, on the other hand it should prevent record companies from exploiting the artist.
The ideas of the Street Performer Protocol should not be restricted by the license.
As we have not defined the term "free music" yet, there is no license yet, that qualifies as free music license. However there are some ideas how such license could look like:
Stuart Reeves has posted an unnamed license to the mailing list.
Sven Windisch has written a draft for a Trackers Public License.
Other ideas are to use the GPL with some word explanations or annotational clauses, or to write a new license from scratch, but close to the GPL.
Compared to software, is it possible to "improve" music? What meaning would version numbering have?
It is not always possible to enforce redistribution of source code, e.g. because of the huge data amount.
The GPL semms not to be free enough, e.g. it does not allow radio broadcasting.
The project should avoid becoming dependant on MP3. Ogg Vorbis could be an alternative.
There is a FreeMusic mailing list about Ram Samudrala's Free Music Philosophy. The FMP also allows music to be for non-commercial use only, which contradicts to DFSG 1.
Copyright (c) 2001 Thomas Uwe Grüttmüller
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