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Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

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Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#41

Post by wexq »

mxcrossb wrote: post #35
wexq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter ( https://twitter.com/Tantacrul ) and youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/martinthekearykid ) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.

IMO the problem is that OSS developers hate any change that’s made to a UI because it breaks their workflow. As a result, a lot of OSS has old style interfaces, and it’s hard for UI designers to convince the others to make changes.

Agreed here.

And also the attitude of "works for me" really pushes usability people out.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#42

Post by anyfactor »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #36
Ecco wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but concretely, what did they buy? And from whom?

They likely now own the copyrights held by the primary developers and all the trademark rights to the Audacity name and logo.

How does trademark work when the license is essentially "do whatever you want to do"?

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#43

Post by detaro »

anyfactor wrote: post #42
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They likely now own the copyrights held by the primary developers and all the trademark rights to the Audacity name and logo.

How does trademark work when the license is essentially "do whatever you want to do"?

The license covers the code, not the trademark. You can use the code/software as long as you observe the license, you can use the trademark as long as you follow the rules set out by the trademark owner. E.g. you can totally use the code to make your own audio editor and distribute it, but the trademark terms might not allow you to call it "Audacity".

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#44

Post by chrisseaton »

anyfactor wrote: post #42
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They likely now own the copyrights held by the primary developers and all the trademark rights to the Audacity name and logo.

How does trademark work when the license is essentially "do whatever you want to do"?

https://www.audacityteam.org/copyright/

> The name “Audacity” is a registered trademark.

It's a regular trademark - it's been acquired.

The trademark isn't covered by the GPL.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#45

Post by chrisseaton »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #12
p49k wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big argument/selling point of the FOSS model has always been that it's compatible with capitalism. You are allowed to sell your software and build it as part of a commercial entity; the only difference is that you have to share the source code to anyone you sell to. There's no reason any company developing FOSS can't be bought/sold.

Sure, but what are they acquiring ?

The trademark.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#46

Post by anyfactor »

spamalot159 wrote: post #6

My first reaction was "oh no..". Audacity has to be one of the most beloved and widely recommended software of all time. It's not often that an aquisition like this goes well for very long. After looking at MuseScore and UltimateGuitar, however, it looks like they are also free and have a similar aesthetic to Audacity. Maybe this will work out after all.

I don't know about UlimateGuitar though. I have found their constant push to signup for pro account quite annoying.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#47

Post by matkoniecz »

mxcrossb wrote: post #35
wexq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter ( https://twitter.com/Tantacrul ) and youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/martinthekearykid ) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.

IMO the problem is that OSS developers hate any change that’s made to a UI because it breaks their workflow. As a result, a lot of OSS has old style interfaces, and it’s hard for UI designers to convince the others to make changes.

I think that more accurate would be saying is that OSS is often developed by people already using it and used to weird interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies.

So there is much smaller motivation to improve it.

And avoiding change for the sake of change is something that I actually like. One of reasons why I switched to LibreOffice and later to Linux is because I am not fan of relearning interface without a good reason.

-------------

But nearly every software would benefit from running small scale UX test. Take three people, ask them to do the most basic tasks - and fix the most common problems.

Your software is much harder to use than you expect.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#48

Post by hellcow »

spamalot159 wrote: post #6

My first reaction was "oh no..". Audacity has to be one of the most beloved and widely recommended software of all time. It's not often that an aquisition like this goes well for very long. After looking at MuseScore and UltimateGuitar, however, it looks like they are also free and have a similar aesthetic to Audacity. Maybe this will work out after all.

UltimateGuitar is a horrible website full of dirty UX to force certain behaviors and block others. You wanted to zoom in on a tab? That's a paid subscription feature! Trying to browse on your phone while at a practice session with your band? Download our app, so we can track you, show you ads and prevent other basic functionality! They're constantly changing these and implementing new paywalls and ways to ruin their product while the core experience of tabs never improves.

It survives only because of platform effects.

I'm not holding out much hope for Audacity.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#49

Post by epilloud »

hellcow wrote: post #48
spamalot159 wrote: post #6

My first reaction was "oh no..". Audacity has to be one of the most beloved and widely recommended software of all time. It's not often that an aquisition like this goes well for very long. After looking at MuseScore and UltimateGuitar, however, it looks like they are also free and have a similar aesthetic to Audacity. Maybe this will work out after all.

UltimateGuitar is a horrible website full of dirty UX to force certain behaviors and block others. You wanted to zoom in on a tab? That's a paid subscription feature! Trying to browse on your phone while at a practice session with your band? Download our app, so we can track you, show you ads and prevent other basic functionality! They're constantly changing these and implementing new paywalls and ways to ruin their…

I fully agree. Trying to use the browser version of ultimate guitar on a 6 inches smartphone is a very frustrating experience. I remember subscribing to the pro version of ultimate guitar about 5 years ago when the app was a must go and in my opinion, it's just been downwards since then

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#50

Post by smolder »

mxcrossb wrote: post #35
wexq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS needs more UI/UX people, and I think Tantacrul is fantastic for this. His twitter ( https://twitter.com/Tantacrul ) and youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/martinthekearykid ) are full of interesting tidbits, an you can tell he's passionate about things. Even if you don't do music/notation his video on Sibelius, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI , is ridiculously funny, but also on point.

IMO the problem is that OSS developers hate any change that’s made to a UI because it breaks their workflow. As a result, a lot of OSS has old style interfaces, and it’s hard for UI designers to convince the others to make changes.

I think a good approach sometimes is to decouple UI from other things as much as possible, then make "classic" UI optional for the people who value that while the improvements are worked on separately. It depends on the project if that just ends up being too much of a hassle or not.
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