Licensing HISE
There has been much confusion among would-be plugin developers surrounding HISE’s licensing, primarily because HISE is released under the GPLv3 license. As a free and open-source program, it might be assumed that you can do as you like with any plugins you build with it, and this is, to a point, true – assuming that you don’t charge money for your release and that any samples you use are also freely released under the GPLv3 license.
That means the samples you use must be your creations, or, if you use pre-existing samples, that they too must be released under the GPL license. Rest assured, there are plenty of free GPL-licensed samples out there, so you shouldn’t be hardpressed to come up with some if you don’t want to roll your own.
This all seems rather obvious, but things get a bit trickier if you intend to release your product commercially. Any payware you build with HISE will incur some licensing fees. HISE’s developer has not, at this time, formally announced the fees for releasing a commercial product made with HISE, but such an announcement is imminent. The intention is for a tiered license structure that allows for wide-scale releases of fully-featured products along with smaller products based around a more limited ‘HISE Player’. Would-be commercial developers should check the HISE site and forum to learn about the options as they are made ready.
The upcoming HISE licensing is not the only cost a prospective commercial developer will need to consider. HISE makes much use of JUCE, an audio-centric crossplatform C++ library developed and maintained by Jules Storer until it was acquired by ROLI in 2014. JUCE too is open-source, and released under the GPL, so and assuming you don’t intend to make any money off of the things you make with it, you don’t have to spend anything to use it and distribute your handiworks. However, if you do intend to go commercial, you’ll need to cough up some bread. You can choose to subscribe or to pay a one-off perpetual fee.