@@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ Computational Musicology
55
66Copyright © 2006-2026 [ Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert] ( http://www.trecento.com )
77
8+ Released under the BSD (3-clause) license. See LICENSE and below.
9+
810For more information, visit:
911https://www.music21.org/music21docs/
1012
@@ -17,12 +19,6 @@ https://www.music21.org/music21docs/usersGuide/usersGuide_01_installing.html
1719` Music21 ` runs on Python 3.11+. (Use music21 version 4 on Python 2 or Py3.4, v5
1820on Py3.5, v6 on Py3.6, v7 on Py3.7, v8 on Py3.8/Py3.9, and v9 on Py3.10)
1921
20- Released under the BSD (3-clause) license. See LICENSE.
21- Externally provided software (including the MIT-licensed Lilypond/MusicXML test Suite) and
22- music encoding in the corpus may have different licenses and/or copyrights.
23- A no-corpus version of ` music21 ` is available also on GitHub for those needing strict
24- BSD-license of all parts of the system.
25-
2622[ ![ Build Status] ( https://github.com/cuthbertLab/music21/workflows/maincheck/badge.svg )] ( https://github.com/cuthbertLab/music21 )
2723[ ![ Coverage Status] ( https://coveralls.io/repos/github/cuthbertLab/music21/badge.svg?branch=master )] ( https://coveralls.io/github/cuthbertLab/music21?branch=master )
2824
@@ -69,3 +65,29 @@ The early development of `music21` was supported by
6965the generosity of the Seaver Institute and the
7066National Endowment for the Humanities, along with MIT's Music and Theater Arts Section
7167and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
68+
69+ ## License Coverage and Other/Prior Licenses ##
70+
71+ Music21 is Open-Source Software released under the BSD (3-clause) license.
72+ Essentially, it's free and you can do with it what you'd like as long as you
73+ keep the LICENSE file and copyright statement.
74+
75+ The license applies to all code files that are new to music21 along with
76+ documentation. Externally provided software (including the MIT-licensed
77+ Lilypond/MusicXML test Suite) may have other licenses. The encoded
78+ musical scores in the corpus have their own copyrights and licenses. They
79+ underlying music is believed to be in the public domain in the US, EU, and
80+ Canada (and most of the world) and the encodings are also either public domain
81+ or used by permission. For those needing a strict BSD-license of all parts of
82+ the music21 system, a no-corpus version of ` music21 ` is available also on GitHub
83+ for those needing strict BSD-license of all parts of the system.
84+
85+ (For historical reasons, music21 before v2 can also be used under the LGPL license.
86+ Between v1 and 2, all prior contributors were
87+ contacted (it was a handful back then) and all agreed to relicense
88+ their contributions under the BSD license).
89+
90+ These detailed explanations of the license were moved to this README.md file in
91+ 2026 (v10) and out of LICENSE, music21/LICENSE and music21/license.txt in
92+ order to make the music21 license more parsable by tooling. The move was not
93+ meant to imply any change in the license or your rights or obligations under it.
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