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Can anyone suggest a free audio library? And by free I mean a library released under GPL or a similar license. BASS and FMOD both do not allow you to sell your software and so you cannot release it under GPL.

Audiere

That doesn't make sense.
Please have a look what GPL is about.

I thought miniFMOD and some other truncated version of BASS would be free. But I can be mistaken.

Then theres osalp but I doubt that's even usable...

hfr: I know what GPL is about - it allows software to be sold. BASS license, however, doesn't, so if you are using BASS in software - it cannot be sold and thus it contradicts the GPL License.

zeroshift: I am looking at Audiere. It looks very interesting, thank you for the advise! I know my question is lame, but in terms of audio libraries, what can be the differences between libraries - I mean, can there be a library that is not very good and what a "good" audio library should have?

the first question is, do you need to sell your software? if not I'd go for fmod or bass.

i use bass for such things.

I do not need to sell it, but uf I want to release it under GPL (and I do) I need to allow others to sell it if they want to. BASS license does not allow that.

Ehh why?
Haven't checked on bass, but if you include fmod and sell your product you have to pay them. If you include fmod in an otherwise gpl product and someone wants to sell it, it should be their problem paying (or remove/replace) fmod. As long as you don't sell you shouldn't need a commercial license.

Have you tried for example: Direct Sound, SDL Mixer, OpenAL or libvorbis?

You also should help us out by specifying how you are going to use the sound library, e.g. what are your requirements for it.

waffle: I have already written the app using BASS (http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=software&t=tapeloops). It plays sound, loops, volume panning control and I guess basically this is it. I would also need recording a wave file and also things like reverse and pitch control.

As far as I can see, Audiere seems to do those things. All I have to figure out is how simple it is to use. The documentation is a bit confusing.

If you just want to sell your software then look for an audio released under BSD or similar kind of license.

If you want to both sell your software and make it open source under GPL license.. then you cannot sell it if it includes a GPL audio lib that is not yours.

I guess the solution would be to use a BSD lib in the program you sell. And use a GPL lib in the open source version.

Perhaps you should try Portaudio. Here is the license.

hfr: GPL does allow commercial distribution. Maybe you should read that Wikipedia article yourself :). The problem is, if this Steve Ballmer guy has ever told one right thing, it is "[GPL is] a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.". The idea of restricting one's freedom to relicense and / or sublicense later added portions of a code (by that individual) is spitting on his face, and belittling of the person-in-question's copyright claims over the said source code. In other words, forcing someone to do something (à la, you must distribute your shit under the same license if you derive from or contribute to a GPL'd source) and calling it "freedom" is ridiculously idiotic and imbecilic. That's my humble opinion of course. The "free" as in "freedom" is not as "freedom"-like as that self-proclaimed messiah claims.

first hit on google for "lgpl audio playback library":
http://www.onasticksoftware.co.uk/oas-audio.html

sdl is also lgpl.

after having read up on some articles about licenses.

It seems there is a problem by releasing under GPL. You can't incorporate outside changes and sell the program ?

Lougi Verona: I can recommend portaudio. Cross platform, BSD license.

(ok, I've just seen that ham already mentioned it)

MIT license, sry

Check also RTaudio: http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtaudio/
(http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtaudio/license.html)

also, OpenAL: http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/default.aspx
(LGPL)

The so-called "cancer" or "viral" property of the GPL is a basic feature of copyright law. If someone else's work touches your work then your work gets an "infection" of the other person's copyright and you can no longer do whatever you please with the work without the other author's consent.

Of course you should always remember that nobody forces you to take another man's work and include it in your program, you are always free to roll your own.

well said.

and in case copyright dicks touch, there is the LGPL, which at least permits dynamic linking and allows you to license your (dynamically linked) code anyway you want as long as you do not need to change the LGPL'd code. (and if you need to: just email the respective author(s) and explain why)

there are ways to get around the license terms of bass and fmod i suppose. you could distribute your commercial application without the free libraries and let the user install those parts themselves.

what hermes + Optimus said.

FMOD has a commercial license. I'd go for it.

If I listen to what Steve Balmer has to say about freedom I might as well listen to the Taliban when it comes to womens education (which I won't, just to be clear =))

slux: ...Which is exactly why people should use more liberal licenses if they want broad adoption so they "infect" other software with less terms. And, sure, this isn't unique to the GPL - but it IS particularly visible there.

Of course, people are free to pick whatever license they want, I just think it's a bit sad that so many people let politics get in the way of software development as it damages the entire open source community. Are we trying to build a better world, or are we trying to force our opinions onto others?

Freedom (as Decipher points out) comes in many flavors, unlike what the FSF wants you to believe. They want to own the term, because it has many positive associations with it that benefit them. The FSF likes to claim that they protect the end-users by giving them modification rights. And I think that they THINK they do, but in the end 99.9% of all end-users don't give a flying rats ass about modification rights. In reality, they are protecting the rights of themselves. That is, the rights of developers that likes to modify the applications they use. That's a very small group of people compared to both the end-users, and developers in general. By choosing a more liberal license, you'd be protecting the rights of all developers.