So anyone who sells Serum presets who works for a company that makes more than $20k a year in any capacity (or makes that themselves if not a company) now needs to buy a Juce license, or only those who accidentally touch the waveform editor?
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Yeah, wondering that, too.
But: A normal user of Serum does not know that Serum is using JUCE. He probably does not even know what JUCE is. So if he sells Serum presets, he might not even be aware that he needs a JUCE license. So, I don’t think he can be required to have one? Even if he should sell Serum presets for more than $20k a year.
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I know it’s just an illustrative example but Serum was not created with JUCE 
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I wonder what this means if Max is still made with Juce and Ableton sells Max devices or bundles them with various tiers of Live?
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Oh really?
Ha, I did not know! (blushes)
Thanks for correcting me.
No. Neither of those.
Someone selling Serum presets is not a User of the Licensee and would not require a JUCE licence.
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Thanks for the clarification! I was confused about your reply to the Serum screenshot.
I’m still very confused. If we have some beta tester and they make some presets they aren’t a User in the license? But if we pay them for them they are a User?
Sometimes we pay artists to make
presets for things, would they then be a User?
If the contract says “For the purposes of this Agreement, a “User” is an employee, agent, independent contractor, or third party developer of the Licensee or any of the Licensee’s Affiliates”.
Third party developer is very broad and undefined here. And Logic is not well defined in the contract either.
I’m very uncomfortable with this proposed new license.
In an effort to sweep up people deliberately bypassing the JUCE license it seems to massively restrict obvious activities that I don’t think you’d have a problem with your customers doing at all…
In the past either people have come to us and said ‘we’ve done this’ and we’ve licensed it from them, or we’ve gone to them and said we’d pay you a few quid to do some cool presets for us and then licensed them off them.
Let’s pick Serum again as an example of the level of logic a plugin might have - would we need a JUCE license for these people?
I hope not, it seems unreasonable and so expensive we might not do it, but your new contract seems to imply we might.
This whole paragraph is pretty hard to parse:
Every User contributing to or modifying source code, object code, content or any other copyrightable work that is either directly or transitively dependent upon the Framework, or modifying the Framework itself included in any Product, requires a Licence. This includes configuration files or "presets" that embed, inject, or otherwise incorporate logic that directly or transitively depends upon the Framework. Any static content that retains its full functionality if the Framework were removed is exempted.
- modifying the framework itself included in any Product is ‘included in any Product’ supposed to apply to the whole previous bit of the sentence or just to Users who are modifying the framework itself? Are users modifying the framework that is not included in a product excluded from the license requirement or something?
- Logic is very very broad. Needs defining I think, ideally so it avoids capturing too many simple things. I really don’t know what definition you are using for this if it’s not the dictionary one. I
- What does transitively mean here?
- What even is static content do you mean things that aren’t source code? Things that don’t contain logic (whatever that is)?
This needs to be clear in the license agreement? As it’s very broad I think as it stands?
Sorry, I introduced serum to this thread as an example. Just because it’s a product where presets can have functions in, but where it wasn’t designed to allow people to do things that might otherwise have been done by a User with a JUCE license.
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Thank you for bringing it up. The issue I’m mostly worried about is the model of working with artists.
For example, say I write something like Serum that maybe has an element of a formula or code in the presets (but not a full on scripting language).
I might sometimes have 100 artists each sending 1-5 presets. Most of those people probably don’t code, but they might take an existing file that has the formula in it and change something in it.
If I had to purchase 100 JUCE licenses for the 100 artists, I would go out of business immediately.
Now, I suspect the EULA is not meant for this kind of use case. So what could be great is a statement on what is the intention.
For example “We intend to make sure that if you hire full time programmers to code against JUCE, then those will count as extra seats even if you call JUCE through an API and not directly”.
Another statement that would greatly help us and others would also be something in the lines of “We would never go against edge cases of someone’s obscure preset format, and instead are trying to make sure companies who directly sell JUCE-based software are paying for seats in proportion to the number of developers working on those products”.
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This is my main worry as well.
Yes, although this should be in the license terms and not as a post on the forum.
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Just to be absolutely sure, I assume that my case is counted in the category of “Starter”?
I have a tiny one man company which concentrates only on making a single product: a DAW which uses JUCE. Only one developer (me) develops the product. There’s no real revenue yet since the project still needs work. (definitely far less than $20,000 per year at this point)
I posted this on the earlier thread around the new pricing tiers, but I believe this is now the place to discuss this. So to reiterate my previous question…
I am currently fully employed in my ‘day job’ as a full-time employee - this is nothing to do with JUCE and I do not even develop code in this day job.
In my evenings I am working on developing audio apps and plugins, dipping my toe in the waters to see if it has any potential, the first of which I am looking to release soon. My understanding is that I can do this through one of two ways:
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As an individual, which means any earnings I receive from these sales I would have to declare on my existing tax return and pay additional income tax on
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Or I could start a one-man company (or set up as a a sole trader - I’m in the UK incidentally) just for this side project, which has some pros (I guess liability/indemnity in case someone tries to claim one of the gnarly bass sounds from a synth I wrote broke their Ming vase on the other side of the room, and perhaps being able to claim tax back on things like a JUCE license as business expenses) but some cons (a second tax return and probably paying an accountant once a year to help with this - which seems overkill right now as I’m just testing the viability of this endeavour).
So if I go down the first route (just sell these products without setting up a company) am I correct that I could use a Starter license if I’m not expecting the total sales revenue from my apps/plugins to exceed $20K per year (and realistically I doubt I’ll get anywhere close to that), or do I have to take my day job salary into account in the $20K limit (and hence would immediately be in one of the upper tiers simply because of my salary - which seems unfair)
Or… if I setup a one-man company for the benefits mentioned above (reduced liability, potential business expense claims) am I correct that this would be the same? i.e. only revenue for my apps/plugins need to be considered in the $20K per year etc. tiers? Or does my day job salary get taken into account simply because this would now be a company? Again, this would seem unfair as my day job is completely unconnected with JUCE.
Many thanks for the clarification.
The annual revenue or funding limits applicable to the Starter, Indie or Pro Licence Types are based on revenue received or obtained by the Licensee over the previous 12 months.
If the owner of a Licence is an individual, or an entity that does not have a separate legal identity from an individual, the applicable annual revenue or funding limit is the total revenue or funding generated by that individual or entity’s use of the Framework from all sources, including donations, sponsorship, advertising, and any other indirect revenue from their use of the Framework.
If the Licensee is a company, or other legal entity, the applicable annual revenue or funding limit is the total revenue or funding received by the entity and all its Affiliates (an “Affiliate” being any business entity from time to time controlling, controlled by, or under common control with the Licensee) from all sources, whether it be received in connection with the entity’s use of the Framework or not, without offsets of any kind.
Funding limits are in USD or currency conversion equivalent.
We have tried to make the new wording of this part of the EULA easy to understand. Which part of it needs clarification?
So I suppose the only clarification I need is to confirm that if I start my ‘side project’ selling JUCE-based applications/plugins and I do NOT expect a revenue of more than $20,000 per year from this JUCE-based venture (and I have no other JUCE-based revenue), then can you please just confirm the following two statements are correct:
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If I sell these products under my own name I can do so with a Starter license (and my ‘day job’ salary is not relevant to the funding limits)
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If I start a company, for which I am the only employee, and sell these products under that company name, I can also do so with a Starter license (and my ‘day job’ salary is not relevant to the funding limits)
Many thanks
You would be an individual:
If the owner of a Licence is an individual, or an entity that does not have a separate legal identity from an individual, the applicable annual revenue or funding limit is the total revenue or funding generated by that individual or entity’s use of the Framework from all sources, including donations, sponsorship, advertising, and any other indirect revenue from their use of the Framework.
The annual revenue limit is the total revenue or funding generated by that individual or entity’s use of the Framework.
You would be a company:
If the Licensee is a company, or other legal entity, the applicable annual revenue or funding limit is the total revenue or funding received by the entity and all its Affiliates (an “Affiliate” being any business entity from time to time controlling, controlled by, or under common control with the Licensee) from all sources, whether it be received in connection with the entity’s use of the Framework or not, without offsets of any kind.
The applicable annual revenue or funding limit is the total revenue or funding received by the entity.
In neither case is there any mechanism where your individual income from activities completely unrelated to JUCE would be included in the revenue limit.
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We have clarified the language around the number of licence seats required.
1.7. The Number of Licence Seats Required to Create and Modify Products
Every Framework User contributing to or modifying source code, object code, content or any other copyrightable work that is either directly or transitively dependent upon the Framework, or modifying the Framework itself, requires a Licence. This includes any configuration that modifies the functionality of a Product in a way that end users of that Product cannot, but excludes configuration files or “presets” that only use features available to the end users of a Product. Any static content that retains its full functionality if the Framework were removed, such as audio and MIDI files, images, and plain text, is exempted.
…
I’ve also updated the original post in this thread.
Thanks for the reply. That is almost clear for me, with the possible confusion on the wording of the Company terms.
As you say: The applicable annual revenue or funding limit is the total revenue or funding received by the entity.
So that sounds great, except the wording after that in the EULA says “from all sources, whether it be received in connection with the entity’s use of the Framework or not”.
So are you saying that I should be treating the Company I sell products through as a totally separate entity (which only has revenue from one source - JUCE plugins) and my day job which is irrelevant and not connected and therefore does not count as revenue to the Company/entity.
Apologies - legal jargon is NOT my forte!
I’m afraid I cannot be more definitive without knowing the exact legal structure your company will use. The above is the most common in the UK.