[PaulDavisThe1st]

> VST3 has an awful license.

It is licensed under two licenses. One of the is the GPL v3 or later. Evidently you don't develop libre software, and additionally dislike the other Steinberg license.

VST3 for all its issues was the first version of VST usable by the libre software community - VST2 was not legally re-distributable even though it was available gratis. This prevented legal development of any libre VST2 plugins, which was not a good situation for anyone.

[duped]

I have multiple projects licensed under GPLv3. The biggest request I have gotten has been to relicense them so closed source projects could use them - which I would be fine with, but I'm not actually free to do that because of upstream GPL dependencies.

There are other legal issues with Steinberg and the licenses, particularly the recent changes (some of which are contradictory and the language needs adjustment). But if you're not a developer of a well known project, Steinberg will ghost you. The devs are kind, but unhelpful, and legal is unreachable.

And ultimately, users don't care about libre software. They care about software that works. That's why VST2 was so popular despite the licensing situation, and why DAWs that supported it are DAWs that people wanted to use.

[kennywinker]

>users don't care about libre software.

correction, SOME users don't care about libre software. I know I didn't for a long time. As my concern grows about the unsustainable consumption we take for granted, and its deep environmental and social impact, libre software has been getting more and more important in my life. A ten year old desktop PC can meet all my computing needs - but it seems that's only true when it's running software that was developed at least partially separated from profit motives.