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Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

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Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#71

Post by ratww »

btown wrote: post #68
dTal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 copyrigh…

No, it's not nuanced.

The discussion stops being nuanced as soon as the company starts the discussion with a threat such as "will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content".

At the point the email in the Github issue was written the API was public. It was removed after the repository owner responded, as can be seen on the Internet Archive.

Nothing ever justifies offering a public API and getting people to use it, to only later backtrack, accuse users of "stealing" and threaten developers with use of physical force.

If the problem is caused by major industries, then just remove the previously public API and don't send mafia-like threats.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#72

Post by irtigor »

tyingq wrote: post #61
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they wanted to do that there's no need to get an ok from 100 or so devs, because you only need a working version, not to be able to use avery single release with the new license. VLC was able to do it (albeit the change was from gpl to lgpl), there's probably 10 or so devs that owns 80% or so percent of the copyrighted code from the current version, once you get those to agree with the change, in the worst case you have to rewrite 20% of your software.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#73

Post by TeMPOraL »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #62
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In fact, accessibility is probably the last remaining hope of power users[0].

With general-audience software, the market doesn't care much about the minority that are the serious users, and it's hard to make a convincing argument to business people here. However, accessibility does have a strong enough ethical argument behind it, which is also increasingly being backed by regulations.

Allowing accessibility tools to work with an application involves annotating UI with machine-readable metadata about information displayed and operations available. That makes the interface comprehensible to any external software - including software that could use this information to provide an alternative, more ergonomic frontend, undoing various user-hostile decisions of the original design.

--

[0] - By which I don't mean just computer nerds, but also everyone who uses some bit of software on a regular basis - particularly in context of work.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#74

Post by irtigor »

detaro wrote: post #43
anyfactor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Iceweasel is a good example, Debian used repackage Firefox wihtout the trademarked stuff.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#75

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Tantacrul wrote: post #66
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Muse…

Thanks for your service!

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#76

Post by xbar »

Tantacrul wrote: post #66
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Muse…

Admirable goals.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#78

Post by meowface »

detaro wrote: post #43
anyfactor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I'm curious: does the WTFPL also let you appropriate a trademark? Or does it not encompass trademark rights?

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#79

Post by dash2 »

Tantacrul wrote: post #66
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Muse…

I just started using MuseScore 3.6 and I've gotta say it is surprisingly usable for an open source project. There are some annoyances, like drag-and-drop scrolling the page instead of selecting notes, but overall it becomes intuitive quite quickly. So, if that is your work, then congratulations so far! Looking forward to version 4.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#80

Post by detaro »

meowface wrote: post #78
detaro wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I'm curious: does the WTFPL also let you appropriate a trademark? Or does it not encompass trademark rights?

I doubt any license that doesn't explicitly address trademarks would be found to cover them, but I'm not a license lawyer.
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