I love this kind of behind-the-scenes, in-the-weeds video, and it's well done.
Unfortunately, the incident with a Muse Group director openly blackmailing an open source developer [1] [2], threatening to have him deported to China while specifically calling out his public criticism of the CCP with a disgusting "who knows how he may be received"—well, to say that this incident leaves a bitter mark in my memory would be an understatement. I am happy to be using other free software for my engraving and playback needs, and with Tenacity just recently having published its first stable release, I'm eager to drop Audacity, too.
Truth be told, I was never a heavy MuseScore user, but I have used Audacity regularly for decades. This turn saddens me, but it matters to me how those I support use their power, and threatening someone's life over an audio program is bullying more severe than that which I can condone.
Whewf, I had no idea-- thanks for putting this out there. FWIW Tanacrul doesn't seem involved, and I for one grant him the benefit of the doubt regarding the views of his employers; He wouldn't be the first person to have critisisms of "the culture at work". I would appreciate any statements he's made on the matter (or that the company's made since), as it's not cool to support this kind of culture by not speaking out, instigating/participating in change, or seeking alternative employment (each of which may or may not be possible or neccessary, depending on the current situation).
I presume that nothing has come of this for those involved (or GPL'ing the mobile app?), but didn't finish the thread or otherwise dig further.
> threatening to have him deported to China while specifically calling out his public criticism of the CCP with a disgusting "who knows how he may be received"
MuseScore has been transformed in recent versions. Great strides in quality while simultaneously turning away from being community-owned, that's at least the feeling I get.
Musescore is now hard to install, distributions don't carry builds of it. It's now only distributed as snap, flatpak and appimage. It now integrates with commercial services, etc.
That's just a characterization of what it looks like from the linux front, the application is sliding over to behave like a commercial project.
It's a really good video like the others from the author. It's a poignant journey into UX design. And then the Jank Man is a great mascot for all the conflicting descisions we have to take for a large software to take shape.
Ah yes, after giving the middle finger to the entire open source community after you bought Audacity - only after screwing over the original userbase of MuseScore.
Tantacrul is a black mark on the FOSS community. Strong words, yes.
I'm not saying he's an angel but has Tantacrul ever said that FOSS was his focus?
He's a composer and UX designer with a prior job in Microsoft, the fact that the tools he gets to work now are open source seems happenstance more than a deliberate choice. He was critical of existing music notation software and now works on one. He probably enjoys that the open nature of Muse Group lets him be pretty transparent about what he gets done and that's about it.
He mentioned that YouTube and Patreon do not provide him with good enough income, so if he quit Muse he'd just go work somewhere else where he can't talk about his work.
Can you elaborate more on this? Obviously they've "acquired" these open source projects - which probably leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many OSS purists - but they're also investing significant money into improving them. At the end of the day there'll be a much better open source app.
I disagree with your statement. Audacity had a minor issue of data collection, which was to report user data to law enforcement if necessary. However, that can be disabled by the user still. Audacity is still open source and it still works. Yes, they didn't handle it the best but the attempted to make good of it.
Also, they didn't really screw over the user base of Musescore. Musescore still works great and they are providing an amazing product for free. Even though pure open source might not be their focus, I have a hard time condemning them for providing great, free products.
(I'm not affiliated with Musescore or their company. I'm just a happy user of both Audacity and Musescore, both of which are the only truly competitive free products in their respective domains.)
While I love the UX improvements, MuseScore 4 is unusably laggy. On every machine I’ve tried, it takes 10+ seconds to respond after a few phrases have been entered.
I was hoping they just rushed out a buggy release, but there’s been no improvement since then. When folks complain about it on the subreddit or forums, Muse Group just brushes them off.
I’ve used Musescore for a long time, and I happily would’ve put up with moderate bugs for a contemporary UX. But unfortunately, 4.0/4.1 is completely broken for me.
We talk a lot about Blender as being the big success story of Open Source (and it is amazing indeed), but we shouldn't forget smaller projects like Musescore. It's really good software and I've used it a lot; it's as good if not better than many of the commercial alternatives.
Now if we only had a Musescore-quality Photoshop or After Effects alternative...
Tantacrul's channel is exactly that, for music software. Thats how he got the job at musescore actually. He made a video critiquing the software, and the devs probably went "hey, that dude is right, how about we hire him?"
tczMUFlmoNk|2 years ago
Unfortunately, the incident with a Muse Group director openly blackmailing an open source developer [1] [2], threatening to have him deported to China while specifically calling out his public criticism of the CCP with a disgusting "who knows how he may be received"—well, to say that this incident leaves a bitter mark in my memory would be an understatement. I am happy to be using other free software for my engraving and playback needs, and with Tenacity just recently having published its first stable release, I'm eager to drop Audacity, too.
Truth be told, I was never a heavy MuseScore user, but I have used Audacity regularly for decades. This turn saddens me, but it matters to me how those I support use their power, and threatening someone's life over an audio program is bullying more severe than that which I can condone.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27881539
[2]: https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issu...
LanternLight83|2 years ago
I presume that nothing has come of this for those involved (or GPL'ing the mobile app?), but didn't finish the thread or otherwise dig further.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
Gordonjcp|2 years ago
I think you're overstating it a bit.
How about you tell the whole story?
kzrdude|2 years ago
Musescore is now hard to install, distributions don't carry builds of it. It's now only distributed as snap, flatpak and appimage. It now integrates with commercial services, etc.
That's just a characterization of what it looks like from the linux front, the application is sliding over to behave like a commercial project.
WhrRTheBaboons|2 years ago
Inviz|2 years ago
TRiG_Ireland|2 years ago
junon|2 years ago
Tantacrul is a black mark on the FOSS community. Strong words, yes.
Hamcha|2 years ago
He's a composer and UX designer with a prior job in Microsoft, the fact that the tools he gets to work now are open source seems happenstance more than a deliberate choice. He was critical of existing music notation software and now works on one. He probably enjoys that the open nature of Muse Group lets him be pretty transparent about what he gets done and that's about it.
He mentioned that YouTube and Patreon do not provide him with good enough income, so if he quit Muse he'd just go work somewhere else where he can't talk about his work.
leoedin|2 years ago
vouaobrasil|2 years ago
Also, they didn't really screw over the user base of Musescore. Musescore still works great and they are providing an amazing product for free. Even though pure open source might not be their focus, I have a hard time condemning them for providing great, free products.
(I'm not affiliated with Musescore or their company. I'm just a happy user of both Audacity and Musescore, both of which are the only truly competitive free products in their respective domains.)
djaychela|2 years ago
grotted|2 years ago
I was hoping they just rushed out a buggy release, but there’s been no improvement since then. When folks complain about it on the subreddit or forums, Muse Group just brushes them off.
I’ve used Musescore for a long time, and I happily would’ve put up with moderate bugs for a contemporary UX. But unfortunately, 4.0/4.1 is completely broken for me.
glimshe|2 years ago
Now if we only had a Musescore-quality Photoshop or After Effects alternative...
aayushdutt|2 years ago
https://ux-design-awards.com/winners/2023-2-musescore-4
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
jansan|2 years ago
thecatspaw|2 years ago
jraph|2 years ago