"This 2.8 release is mostly bugfix version (complete list here)
that also comes with a couple of very interesting features
especially Distributable VST support. This means that there is no
more need to fetch the VST SDK from Steinberg in order to build
Ardour with VST support, and distributions are now free to compile
and release packages of Ardour with VST support. Other 2.8 features
are: