I went back and forth about whether or not to say anything -- but given the circumstances I think it's best to be upfront and defend myself before things escalate. I received a private message from the creator of the Beepblaster:
If you not have - please check my Readme.txt file in beepblaster.zip on my first Post.
The readme referenced is a license document -- in which the relevant section appears to be:
The Beepblaster product, based on a Waveblaster compatible connector and
PWM-enabled chipset is the intellectual property of dev […]
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The Beepblaster product, based on a Waveblaster compatible connector and
PWM-enabled chipset is the intellectual property of developer [redacted].
Any commercial imitation, copy or duplication is strictly prohibited,
and will be prosecuted. I expressly reserve the right to grant licenses.
For the record -- all I have done in this thread is recreate, exactly, the schematics provided in the original author's github repository, making what changes were needed to enable the stereo mode that I myself coded and provided freely without restriction. The original author chose the MIT license for this project, so it is freely available to anyone who wishes to use it. I have likewise provided my modifications to the code under the same license. I have not, at any point, attempted to reverse-engineer the Beepblaster's "beep-mode" and have no intention of doing so. The MIT license does not require subsequent changes to be open-sourced, so that change is property of the Beepblaster's developer. As I stated in the beginning, I think that the Beepblaster's creator should be able to profit from his creation and I was not looking to "step on his toes" -- I began this as a personal project and wasn't going to sell anything. I even wanted to buy one of his modules when they were available. I used all through-hole components to make it easy for me to make with my level of skill.
Therefore, I will be taking the following action:
I will cease development of the "PWMBLASTER" to allow the Beepblaster's creator exclusive control over his project. I am assuming his claim of copyright stems from ownership of the concept of combining this readily available open-source project with a wavetable header, so I will no longer work on any such device.
I will instead modify my design to have a MIDI input, to avoid any conflict with the Beepblaster. I will offer that midi module for sale if there is interest. I also have a "lower" fidelity mode that will be configurable via MIDI NRPN command. I'm not sure how the Beep Mode works -- but what I've done is to artificially limit the number of voices available to the synth, which works sort of like when the NES would stop playing a channel of music to play a sound effect. I'll post that change to my github repo when it's fully tested and once I make some MIDI files to turn it on and off.
I'm sorry for this wall of text, but I don't want any legal trouble so I thought it best to make the accusation public and make it clear I will no longer be working on a wavetable daughterboard. As I set out in the beginning I did not want to steal anyone's thunder. So I will willingly vacate that space and return it to its original creator. I just started this as a beginner electronics project to take advantage of the change I made to the code to allow stereo operation.
Respectfully,
AN