[CLAM] ZIP files of CLAM applications source code + possibleadditions

[Koen Tanghe]

Hi Xavier,

On Thursday, December 22, 2005 6:52 PM [GMT+1=CET],
Xavier Amatriain <xxxxamat at iua.upf.esxxx> wrote:

> Hi Koen,
>
> On Wed, 2005-12-21 at 16:11 +0100, Koen Tanghe wrote:
>> We have a free library version, but the GPL doesn't allow to link
>> with non-GPL-compatible code (not even DLL's from what I read), so
>> the only way to do it without opening the source code would be to
>> modify the Voice2MIDI source code and add in a system call to a
>> standalone transcription module and then read in the output of that
>> application back into Voice2MIDI (not a nice "integration" but
>> anyway...)
>
> What do you mean by "free library version"? Do you mean that you don't
> charge any money for this version? If I understand right it is not
> open source, right?

Correct. The exact terms are here:
http://www.ipem.ugent.be/MAMI/Public/Software/MelodyTranscriptionLibrary/SoftwareUserAgreement.html

Note: I'm not working at IPEM any longer, so I'm not sure, but the download 
of the library has been non-functional for some (long) time now, so it may 
be possible that it won't work... I notified the system admin at IPEM about 
this several times, so I hope it gets fixed real soon now...
The little console-based demo program around this library is accessible 
though.

As you know something about software licenses, may I ask you this question: 
do you know if there exist licenses for a library that are compatible with 
the GPL, and allow you to dynamically link non-open source code with GPL 
software? This might be difficult from what I read...

>> Would the CLAM team feel something for adding in a check to see if
>> the MAMI melody transcriber is available, and then if that is the
>> case, give the user the choice to use that instead of the CLAM one,
>> and then do a fork/execute of our tool and read in the generated
>> output file to be used as pitch detectoin results?
>> It's just that you seem to have already built a nice working
>> interface, and we seem to have a nice working transcription module.
>> Could be a nice combination. Just a thought. What do you think?
>
> We would definitely love to support the MAMI transcriber from CLAM.
> But if, as I mentioned earlier, it is not GPL or not even open
> source... it is difficult for us to invest resources into that task.

Yes, I understand that, hence my investigation in downloading the source 
code.

> I suggest that you and Marc either reconsider opening up the source
> code or you work the solution you mention yourself by accessing the
> source code that we provide.

Just for the record: this is not something developed by IPEM, but by the 
DSSP group (at ELIS, UGent), who was one of the 4 partners in the MAMI 
project. IPEM collected example query files used for testing and optimizing 
this software.

I discussed a bit with Jean-Pierre Martens, leader of the DSSP group, and it 
seems like the 2nd option would be the one to follow. But as I said, the 
zip-file of the Voice2MIDI source code seems to be corrupt when I downloaded 
it (both WindowsXP itself and WinZip can't open it)...

Best wishes,

Koen