Free/Libre music

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Free music or libre music is music that, like free software, can freely be copied, distributed and modified for any purpose. Thus free music is either in the public domain or licensed under a free license by the artist or copyright holder themselves, often as a method of promotion. It does not mean that there should be no fee involved. The word free refers to freedom (as in free software), not to price. -- wikipedia

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[Question] License for Sheet Music (Lilypond) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by TechieDamien@lemmy.ml to c/libremusic@lemmy.ml

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I have been writing some music (mostly for classical guitar) and have been engraving it with lilypond (fantastic tool for free quality engraving). I want to put all of these compositions into a git repository and release them to the world under a permissive license. I would like to pick a copyleft license a la GPLv3, but cursory research has not turned up much.

My question is should I use a license for code, eg GPLv3, or for more creative works, eg Creative Commons? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I have now published them under CC-BY-SA-4.0 at https://git.techiedamien.xyz/TechieDamien/MusicDump.

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[–] Hawke@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think GPL is not a good fit, I would go with a cc license of some kind.

[–] TechieDamien@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thank you! Would you mind explaining your reasoning please?

[–] Hawke@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

GPL is designed for computer programs, and its requirements just don’t fit well.

Computer programs (at least those distributed as binaries) are inherently obfuscated so it’s extremely difficult to figure out how it was made.

Text on the other hand (including musical notation) is inherently human-readable. There’s just no need to include the source code, and the requirements of the GPL can be onerous for published material (quoting GNU: For instance, anyone publishing the book on paper would have to either include machine-readable “source code” of the book along with each printed copy, or provide a written offer to send the “source code” later.)

There are exceptions where GPL or something like it might fit: I could see an “open source” bakery which could use the GPL for its products to require that a recipe be provided with its products and derivatives. Computer generated pictures or sounds might benefit. Basically things where it’s difficult or infeasible to reverse-engineer how a thing is made. In most cases though there’s a better license to use.

As to why I suggested Creative Commons? It’s broadly a good fit for this kind of thing, I like the organization, and a lot of thought has been put into making it legally binding internationally. Also have a look at https://choosealicense.com/non-software/ and think about your goals and what elements of cc might fit with them. Even if you don’t like cc for whatever reason, it has those elements (credit, commercial use, derivation, sharing) that you should probably be thinking about.

Sources:

[–] TechieDamien@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago

Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me. I have decided to go with CC-BY-SA-4.0 as it adheres closer to my copyleft ideals.