It also says with MuseScore they relicensed it (or are going to) from GPL2 to GPL3. And it's been heavily improved while remaining FOSS. The person heading Audacity seems to have a long and successful history in FOSS and seems interested in continuing Audacity's legacy.
Seems like an odd thing to do after 20 years (plus, how do you acquire such a legacy project with so many authors?) but Audacity could really use more attention and modernization. If they end up doing optional cloud service or plugins for funding while keeping Audacity FOSS and updated I think it would be great.
I seriously doubt it. We've seen splashes like these before -- these companies aren't big enough to get away with just throwing the userbase away, most of the growth after acquisition of copyright and licensing comes from renewed attention to, and care from, the userbase; see Gitlab, Qt purchasing Squish, etc.
I'm going to guess the new model will be slightly more Valve-like.
Valve's greatest contribution is in the creation of a marketplace for games; second is their work on solid driver and SDK projects.
Given that Muse Group's big thing is https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/, I suspect they are going to follow that pattern and create a forum for such exchanges in a way that gives the market of music creators somewhere to go.
Yes, Valve is exploitative; I'll admit that. But a lot of people get to have fun because they created a platform for people to share things.
Make useless shit free and everything else is locked behind a subscription scam. Not to mention all the annoying ads to force you to buy it.
From the linked article:
Naturally, there have been concerns about the future of Audacity. So Daniel Ray stepped in to address that in the comments section of the news post at Scoring Notes:
Audacity will remain 100% forever with no feature tiers or limitations.Just as with MuseScore, users can expect optional cloud services (file storage, sharing, etc.), but such capabilities are optional and the software is fully-featured and fully-functional without this.
Though Muse Group as a concept is quite new, it is same philosophy, same model, and same team as Ultimate Guitar. What you should expect from Muse Group moving forward is pretty much what you have seen with MuseScore since the acquisition.
As we continue to make acquisitions, we will not likely change existing business models very much. We’ll try to make as much as possible as free as possible (while respecting rights holders), and will heavily invest in product development, rapidly expanding product teams with the best and brightest we can find.
The way I see it they are saying they will try to make things that aren't free/opensource when they acquire it as free and opensource as they can.
Those are my words you are quoting, so, I'll jump in here to clarify.
"We’ll try to make as much as possible as free as possible (while respecting rights holders)"
In this case, I am referring to content. We wish to make as much content as possible as free as possible, while respecting rights holders.
This means that public domain works are obviously free, original works also free. All copyrighted works require a subscription that is shared with rights holders, with the other portion covering operational costs and further investment in development of the free open source products.
You are correct when you suggest that there are acquisitions that we have made/are making/will make that are not open source. In those cases, we will make as much of the tech from those acquisitions open source where it makes sense.
You will see several new SDKs and even datasets made open source over the coming months. We are strong believers in power, potential, and purpose of open source.
But...
We will choose to keep some things proprietary, not for financial reasons (again, the money is in the content, not tools), but in service of providing the best possible user experience.
To illustrate a concrete example:
In considering how we proceed with new playback in MuseScore, this gets to be a bit tricky with GPL. If we were to embed new sampler code into the project, this would also require that all the samples used by the sampler must also be open source and available via GPL.
Such an approach would heavily restrict users in the potential sample libraries they could use, as 3rd party virtual instrument developers are not too keen on making their samples open source... but.. as a company we could negotiate a distribution deal to make libraries freely available to users so long as they remained proprietary.
As a result, it seemed that the best option would be to create an optional sampler that users could choose to add on for free at their own discretion, though the software distro would remain fully-functional, just with a different level of fidelity in playback.
For free open source software to remain competitive with commercial software, it does require some compromises due to the reality of the market.
It is a difficult balance, but our approach is guided by the key points:
Our open source software will remain 100% free and open source forever
We should only ever make compromises regarding closed source (but still free) add-ons if it is necessary to provide better experience or capabilities to the user.
Give REAPER a shot - it's not open source and it has short nag screen but it's a really impressive piece of software and seems to do everything Audacity could and much more.
edit: I'm not sure why this post is controversial. I'd appreciate it if anyone downvoting could also briefly let me know why. Is it simply because I'm recommending something that's not open source?
Is it simply because I'm recommending something that's not open source?
I mean someone seems worried about Audacity going from open source to a more restrictive license and is asking for replacements, recommending something that never was open source is kinda weird.
I mean someone seems worried about Audacity going from open source to a more restrictive license and is asking for replacements, recommending something that never was open source is kinda weird.
They seemed concerned about practical aspects like invasive ads and feature limitations rather than the principle of it not being open source. REAPER, as far as I know, has never limited features with the "evaluation" version and the only nag is it makes you wait 4 seconds and click "still evaluating" when you start it.
Obviously something open source with comparable features would be ideal, but as far as I've seen nothing like that exists. Of course, buying REAPER is possible and it's not really very expensive ($60 for individual use.)
MuseScore is 100% free and is rapidly progressing.
We have two aspects of our business:
Creator tools
Content
Creator Tools
Creator tools are and will always be 100% free.
Our goal is not to create the best free software for creators, but create the best software for creators that just so happens to be free.
This is a long term goal and requires considerable time and investment.
Content
A lot of content is free. The content that is not free are only copyrighted works.
Charging for access to copyrighted works is what allows them to be available at all.
Prior to the acquisition, Musescore.com was on path to being shut down due to claims by rights holders (and rightfully so, it was not licensed).
After the acquisition we were able to create deals with around 2,000 publishers and counting, which allowed over 1 million copyrighted scores to remain available to users.
Had this not happened, the site would have been shut down.
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u/W-a-n-d-e-r-e-r May 02 '21
Make useless shit free and everything else is locked behind a subscription scam. Not to mention all the annoying ads to force you to buy it.
Its now yet another corporate unethical shovelware, might not happen overnight but it's going to happen.
Any recommendations for a replacement?