License question about sf2 soundfont in Tuxguitar

[Helmar Gerloni]

Hello legal team,

I am trying to update the Tuxguitar package from version 1.2 to 1.5.6.

The new version includes the soundfont "Magic Sound Font v2.0". While Tuxguitar is licensed under LGPL-2.1+, the license of the soundfont file (MagicSFver2.sf2) is not 100% clear.

The issue was discussed in

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819332
https://sourceforge.net/p/tuxguitar/support-requests/13/

In the SF ticket, the Tuxguitar author states that the author of the soundfont, Dennis, "allowed us redistribute the soundfont with tuxguitar".
I tried to email Dennis to ask about the license of the soundfont, but did not receive a reply.

The soundfont file can also be downloaded as "free soundfont" in the "Community Audio" collection on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/opensource_audio?query=free-soundfonts-sf2-2019-04
https://archive.org/download/free-soundfonts-sf2-2019-04/MagicSFver2.sf2

There are already a few other sf2 soundfonts in Debian. sf2 files can be edited with open source soundfont editors like Polyphone, so the format should not be a problem.

Do you think it is possible to add the file MagicSFver2.sf2 to the Debian package, maybe under LGPL-2.1+, like the Tuxguitar sources? Or maybe as "public domain"?

Regards, Helmar.

[Roberto]

From my personal experience of 15+ years contacting with authors of thousands

of "free" sound fonts: they are usually composed of sounds taken from random
places, and nobody really knows who made them or what their license are. Many
of them take samples from other "free" sound fonts, and chain gets larger and
larger so the true origin is difficult to trace. The assemblers of the sound
fonts just assume that, if they can't find a copyright notice attached to the
samples, they must be in the public domain. And most likely they are not. Even
if they were originally released under a permissive license, the license and
authors should be maintained as a minimum. Of course, there are exceptions of
sound font assemblers who correctly document their sources and licenses of each
individual sample, but that's a lot of work, and most common case is just to
ignore everything and assume that it will be fine. It's the true and sad state
of most free sound sample libraries out there.

[Helmar Gerloni]

https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2023/01/msg00005.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2023/01/msg00097.html

Roberto, Tobias, thanks for your answers.

I have removed MagicSFver2.sf2 from the package and added a note to README.Debian.
The new package now depends on fluid-soundfont-gm, see
https://mentors.debian.net/package/tuxguitar/

The package builds and runs on amd64 and in Qemu for arm64. It looks pretty good to me now.
Maybe someone can take a look and upload it?
If there is anything more I can do, just let me know.

[tony mancill]

Post by Helmar Gerloni

https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2023/01/msg00005.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2023/01/msg00097.html

Roberto, Tobias, thanks for your answers.
I have removed MagicSFver2.sf2 from the package and added a note to README.Debian.
The new package now depends on fluid-soundfont-gm, see
https://mentors.debian.net/package/tuxguitar/
The package builds and runs on amd64 and in Qemu for arm64. It looks pretty good to me now.
Maybe someone can take a look and upload it?
If there is anything more I can do, just let me know.

Hello Helmar,

I am reviewing the updated package now and will either sponsor an upload
if everything looks good or provide feedback.

Thank you!
tony

[tony mancill]

Post by tony mancill

Post by Helmar Gerloni

https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2023/01/msg00005.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2023/01/msg00097.html

Roberto, Tobias, thanks for your answers.
I have removed MagicSFver2.sf2 from the package and added a note to README.Debian.
The new package now depends on fluid-soundfont-gm, see
https://mentors.debian.net/package/tuxguitar/
The package builds and runs on amd64 and in Qemu for arm64. It looks pretty good to me now.
Maybe someone can take a look and upload it?
If there is anything more I can do, just let me know.

Hello Helmar,
I am reviewing the updated package now and will either sponsor an upload
if everything looks good or provide feedback.

The update looks great! I have updated debian/copyright to document
the files that are licensed under a license other than the LGPL, but
otherwise everything looks good. I will upload today.

For the time-being, I will push the updated sources and tag to the
current java-team repo [1], but we may want adjust that before the
bullseye release since the package is no longer team-maintained.

Thank you for your work on this!
tony

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/java-team/tuxguitar