Development and Distribution Questions

Now that I have made something with MaxMSP, I want to send it to others. How can I do that?

If it's a MaxMSP Patch:

• You can send your patch to any person who owns MaxMSP and has it installed. That person can just open it directly.

• There's also a 30-day demo available for downloading, if the person has not installed MaxMSP before.

If it's a MaxMSP Collective:

You may also build a collective out of your patch. This bundles up your patch into one file to make it easier to send. It's especially useful if your patch contains a number of different files. Collectives are cross-platform compatible (MaxMSP 4.3 or greater).

Like a Patch, a Collective also requires a MaxMSP installation, demo, or runtime version. Refer to the documentation for more details on how to create collectives.

If it's a Max/MSP Standalone:

You may turn your patch into a platform-specific standalone application. A standalone does not require any additional MaxMSP installation or runtime. You can give this away free. However, if you want to sell a standalone, keep reading for important licensing information.

I would like to sell my standalone application or plug-in. May I do that?

Yes. Macintosh applications and plug-ins made with MaxMSP may be freely sold and distributed.

Windows plug-ins may be sold and distributed. Windows applications created with Max 5 may be sold and distributed. In the past, we required a licensing contract and a $1000 one-time fee for selling an application created with Max 4.x on Windows. We are no longer collecting this fee, but we do not encourage developers to pursue application distribution with older Windows versions of Max.

Why is there a licensing fee only for Windows applications?

The reason for this fee is a result of the software libraries we used to port MaxMSP to Windows. We used a third party commercial library, and our license agreement with this third party (to whom we pay on-going fees) applies to any software which is created on Windows. By extension, it will be their libraries you use to commercially release your standalone application. Therefore, you are also liable for a licensing fee.

We are committed long term to rewriting Windows MaxMSP in order to do away with this dependency, but we currently have no timeframe in which this will happen.
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