pocket

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Licensing#

Pocket is free and open source. Anyone can use it at no cost, including for paid gigs, releases, teaching and commercial work, and the music you make with it is yours. Pocket's code is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (AGPL-3.0-only), a license approved by the Open Source Initiative. If you want to build a closed product on Pocket, a commercial license is available.

This page explains what that means in everyday terms. It isn't legal advice. The license text and the additional permissions are what count.

Using Pocket is free#

You don't need to ask anyone or pay anything to:

  • use Pocket for anything, including paid gigs, commercial releases, client sessions, teaching and research;
  • run it on as many of your machines as you like, on your own or with an agent;
  • change it for your own use and keep those changes private;
  • share it, changed or not, as long as you pass on the same freedoms (see below).

Nothing in the license depends on whether you earn money from your music.

Your music is yours#

The license covers Pocket itself, not what you make with it. Recordings, renders, MIDI files, arrangements, Live Sets, analysis results, reports and listening notes you make with Pocket are yours (or belong to whoever already owns them), and you can share or sell them on any terms.

A few of Pocket's Max for Live devices, such as Baste and the Native MIDI devices, can end up inside your project folders. Pocket's device builders write them there, and Stitch and Pipette carry them into trials and promoted projects. An additional permission lets you share a project that contains unmodified Pocket devices with no license conditions at all. If you change a device and share your changed version, the license applies to it as it does to the rest of Pocket.

Pocket's license gives no rights to recordings, models or other material that you or others source independently. Those keep their own terms.

When the license asks something of you#

The license only asks something of you when you pass Pocket itself on to other people:

  • If you share Pocket, changed or not, include the license and make the source code of what you share available, including any changes you made.
  • If you change Pocket and let other people use your changed version over a network, for example as a hosted service or a shared server, offer those people the source code of your changed version.

Using Pocket on your own machines, or through an agent that runs it locally, asks nothing of you.

Building a product on Pocket#

If you distribute software that includes or builds on Pocket's code, or offer a changed Pocket as a service, the license requires your product's source code to be available under the same license. That's how Pocket stays open: improvements come back to everyone.

If you'd rather keep your product closed, you can get a commercial license instead. It lets you build on Pocket without the source-sharing conditions, and suits companies making plugins, hardware or hosted services. If you're not sure whether you need one, ask.

Commercial licensing: TODO: commercial licensing contact

Why Pocket is licensed this way#

Pocket is dual licensed: the same code is available under two licenses. The AGPL is for everyone. The commercial license is for people who build closed products. Commercial licenses help pay for Pocket's maintenance, so the core can stay free for the musicians it's made for. Pocket's core will always be available under an open source license.

Contributors sign a contributor license agreement so that the project can offer both licenses. It grants a license and doesn't transfer anyone's copyright, and it promises that every contribution stays available under an open source license. Contributing explains the process.

Other parts of this repository#

  • The example scripts in examples/ and the agent skill in skills/ are MIT licensed, so you can copy them into your own scripts and agent setups on any terms.
  • Pocket's note decoder adapts part of Basic Pitch, and Basic Pitch's Apache-2.0 license travels with it.
  • The website's font is under the SIL Open Font License.

NOTICE lists exactly which license applies to which files.

Earlier versions#

Pocket 0.4.0 and earlier were released under the MIT License. If you have a copy of one of those versions, you can keep using it under the MIT License. Later versions are licensed as described on this page.

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