Post Syndicated from original https://lwn.net/Articles/890272/

The world of music and audio production is largely dominated by
proprietary software vendors. Among them, Steinberg stands out as a company
that created some of the most-used software, including the Cubase and Nuendo digital audio
workstations. Steinberg is also known as the creator of the VST plugin API
that, largely due to its licensing policy, has irritated developers enough to
inspire multiple attempts at creating an open-source alternative. Even now,
when the VST3 SDK is available under the
GPLv3 license, the way the company exercises its control over the SDK
keeps pushing developers away toward other open-source solutions.

This is an introduction to open-source plugin
APIs for musicians and sound engineers alike. It focuses on the options in
the larger ecosystem and how their shortcomings led to the creation of new
alternatives with liberal licensing.