Steinberg closing down VST2 for good

Of course, Juce not supporting it and Steinberg not including it in the VST3 SDK are totally different matters. I’d be one of the voices raising concern about VST2 deprecation or removal from Juce when we get to that stage. Juce’s developments and fixes for issues (e.g. those introduced by OS updates out of our control etc) will be needed in existing Juce plugins for much longer than the lifetime Steinberg chooses for its SDK.

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Thanks for the feedback. I can’t comment on Steinberg’s objectives, but perhaps @ygrabit (of Steinberg) could? Yvan, sorry to pull you into this, but it would be great to get Steinberg’s position about the possibility of deprecating the VST 2 headers rather than removing them, as it would otherwise force people to maintain separate codebases.

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JUCE already implements VST2 without dependencies on the Steinberg VST2 headers or other code, commit from Tue Mar 14 2017 by hogliux :

Partially reverted fix for new VST3 SDK 3.6.7 by removing any dependency to VST2 SDK
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It was actually done in an older commit:
https://github.com/WeAreROLI/JUCE/commit/9f31d6498a899dc3c4f8229bfd203737bc9901a1

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Like we already mentioned in other forums, it is time to move to VST3, we will not deprecate VST2, it is already deprecated since our previous announcement some years ago.

We are in touch since some year with main DAW companies, helping them to move to VST3… We hope that very soon all major sequencers will support VST3.

Concerning VST2:
Plugin developers having already signed a VST2 license agreement with Steinberg could continue to develop VST2 after the first of October 2018.
After this date NEW developers (the one having not signed the VST2 license agreement until this date) will be not allow to distribute VST2 plugins.
Note that distributing or reverse engineering the VST2 SDK (partially or fully) is NOT allowed by the current Steinberg VST2 license agreement.
Thanks for your attention
Yvan

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You have totally lost touch of reality!

Sincerely
Jussi

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@ygrabit Put MIDI CC back in VST3 and then we can talk :stuck_out_tongue:

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How does this affect hosting VST? If we want to develop a host in the future that supports VST2 (there are hundreds if not thousands of plugins as VST2s that will never be rebuilt as VST3), do we need to sign the license agreement by October?

And are you guys even accepting new paperwork?

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@ygrabit This means that JUCE is infringing the Steinberg VST2 license agreement, right? Will Steinberg sue ROLI?

Yvan, can you please provide concrete information on what people should do to get that VST2 license signed before Oct 1?
Thx - Leo

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Do you need so sign something on (real) paper? I had the impression it was just a few clicks to agree, but for me this was a few years ago…

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@ygrabit I registered the developer account for my company with Steinberg back in 2008 and also officially registered a plugin ID later on. I have emails about this, but didn’t find any paperwork / PDF.
I would also like to know if there is anything further I need to do administration-wise, so I can keep supporting VST2 after October 1st 2018.

Note: there is no VST2 license agreement in the latest VST 3 SDK download. I did find a “VST Licensing Agreement.rtf” file in an old VST2 SDK. Do you need me to send this document?
Thanks!

Right… we mailed in our agreement as well… but is there any way to verify it was received and processed?

Rail
Platinum Samples

As for me, my first contact with Steinberg was back in 2000. And I registered some plugins in 2006 and 2008. If I need to do more, please let everyone know what steps to take?

Wait?

If someone comes along next year and wants to make a VST2 for a host that doesn’t support VST3. And they use JUCE’s independent implementation of VST2, not only are they in violation of Steinberg’s IP, but they can’t even make things right by signing an agreement with Steinberg?

I think this is the perfect opportunity for DAW authors and the wider audio developer community to make a sober assessment of the resources required to support VST3 and the long-term advantages of moving towards non-proprietary plugin standards such as http://lv2plug.in

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Thanks Koen - not needed, I also have older SDK copies

Hi, can someone link the license agreement doc? I don’t have any old SDKs lying around. thx

http://www.dith.it/listing/vst_stuff/vstsdk2.4/doc/sdk.overview.html

Rail

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Completely agree Antoine. I’d love to see JUCE support LV2

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