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Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

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Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#61

Post by tyingq »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #56
tyingq wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying they are doing this, but the copyright owner can fork the GPL work and create a closed source version if they want to. The GPL doesn't restrict the copyright owner in any way.

But as GP mentioned, the project has 126 contributors on GitHub who each own part of the copyright. So Muse Group doesn't own the full copyright of Audacity now.

Yes, I suppose they would have to back up time and take an earlier branch where the number of significant contributors was much smaller and easier to cull down.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#62

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #31
VadimPR wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get UI/UX people in from?

Learn. That's what I did. The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman). For me, it all started with Don Norman's excellent book The Design of Everyday Things [0] (nee The Psychology of Everyday Things ). Reading that book changed the way that I view the world. I can't walk through a door, anymore, without evaluating its affordances and us…

> The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman)

Which is silly because good UX that works for people with disabilities or impairments also benefits fully able users in the vast majority of cases

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#63

Post by offtop5 »

arbitrage wrote: post #10
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.

Beloved is a little too strong of word choice for me. The UI is garbage. The plugin architecture is rough. It's difficult to workflow -- no automation is really available. Audacity produces good results, at the cost of an insanely high requirement for patience and experience. What you are actually in love with is the creative process of editing and creating audio. As a project, audacity has languished for a long time…

Obviously it does what it does well. It can edit audio quickly. I'll never use it for anything else aside from chopping up samples. If you want a full DAW use Logic.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#66

Post by Tantacrul »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #31
VadimPR wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get UI/UX people in from?

Learn. That's what I did. The issue is that many designers and engineers loathe Usability and Accessibility people (like Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman). For me, it all started with Don Norman's excellent book The Design of Everyday Things [0] (nee The Psychology of Everyday Things ). Reading that book changed the way that I view the world. I can't walk through a door, anymore, without evaluating its affordances and us…

(Tantacrul Here)

It's true that there often exists a clash between designers and those who champion accessibility standards. IMO, this is normally because the designer in question hasn't enough experience working on software. Speaking for myself? I designed the accessibility features in Paint 3D while at Microsoft. I was in charge of accessibility of another Microsoft Studio that worked on Hololens software.

For MuseScore 4 (currently in development), I have made sure that every bit of UI passes web accessibility contrast standards and I have designed a new 'High Contrast Mode' which is being implemented right now. In addition, myself and another member of the UKAAF (Peter Jonas) have designed a far better focus state / keyboard navigation system into MS4 than MS3 had. This will enable much better screen reader support and will also help with ongoing efforts to introduce Braille support too.

I'm not one of those designers. But I do sympathise with the concern. I see it all the time!

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#67

Post by e3bc54b2 »

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.

Its also from the facts that almost every "redesign" or presentation for one, is often full regression in use ability terms.

It does help when software users that happen to have good UI chops suggest redesign because then it often improves things, as I've seen happen with KDE and Budgie, at least. But pulling in UX "designers" who have no skin in the game and letting them play around is how you get ridiculous unusable crap like Google Pay, Apple Music, Windows 8, whatever Google is calling their Android UI now, and more.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#68

Post by btown »

dTal wrote: post #34
simondotau wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, isn't it nice to have a funding model that allows developers of open source software to be sustainably salaried?

Not at the expense of what it stands for, no.

One of the comments by a MuseScore developer in that thread is much more nuanced: https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issu...

Essentially it boils down to this: if you see value to society in allowing people to share musical scores with each other, that's fundamentally at odds with a libre software philosophy. Because if you let people share music on a platform, they will inevitably share copyrighted melodies, which means not only that you are forced to monetize to be able to strike licensing arrangements, or else be sued into oblivion. And you are also required to enforce that the sharing software be used as intended in order to placate rightsholders, or else be sued into oblivion. And it's that "as intended" that is fundamentally different from how many of us think about FOSS.

There's a lot of corporate speak in the official post here related to the emplacement of score downloads behind the paywall in the first place https://musescore.com/groups/improving-musescore-com/discuss... but it's the same sentiment: if MuseScore.com doesn't put in place paywalls for downloads and enforce them, they will lose their ability to negotiate with major music publishers, and they see that outcome being a net loss to society of access to digital scores.

Frankly, I think this is a reasonable tradeoff. MuseScore sees monetization and adherence to these restrictions as a necessary step to ensure they have the resources and community to promote music literacy. That's a distinct mission from, say, GNU's mission, and just as valid. And of all the corporations using GPL for visions distinct from GNU's vision (here's looking at you, AWS), this one at least has a reason beyond being a naked cash grab.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#69

Post by open-source-ux »

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.

Related is this: sometimes you have been using a piece of software for such a long time you can no longer judge whether the user-interface (UI) is any good. You've simply mastered the steps (and keyboard shortcuts) needed to accomplish a task and it now feels "natural", no matter how clunky or clumsy the steps remain.

And there's also a widespread belief among developers that making a task easier in the UI means "dumbing down" the UI. Or that making software easier to use means it could never satisfy "power users".

Developers love to revel in arcane interface minutiae (especially for command-line tools). They think it's equal to acquiring a skill or knowledge. But it's not really. Instead, it is the perpetration of a clumsy method to completing a task. But now that the developer has mastered that method (and that feeling of "knowledge" gained as a consequence), they won't easily let go. Or be easily persuaded of a different method.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#70

Post by PicassoCTs »

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 love those blender tutorial videos, were they dont even bother to tell you were in the menue the button is for something, and instead go "press key x y z" - though 2.8 has greatly improved the whole affair.

This should in theory allow for a complete redesign of the gui though, as the core audience uses shortkeys anyway.

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