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> I wasn’t aware that Audacity had been acquired by The Muse Group recently. Am I the only one who thinks this the bigger scandal? An open source project sold

> I wasn’t aware that Audacity had been acquired by The Muse Group recently. Am I the only one who thinks this the bigger scandal? An open source project sold to a company?

01100011 5y ago
So what? Audacity is LGPL. The company can't un-GPL it.
- progre 5y ago
  Since they have had most of the copyright for contributions assigned to them they can rewrite the few parts that they dont have copyright for and relicense the whole thing though.
  - joosters 5y ago
    But so what? The fact that it is (or was) open source means that anyone can still take and re-use the code, regardless of whether it gets re-licensed in the future. The re-licensing prevents nothing.
    - progre 5y ago
      Sure, but forking it is a completely unneccesary duplication of efforts moving Audacity forward thats only motivated by the introduced telemetry.
input_sh 5y ago
What's the scandal? There are companies build enterprise features on top of open source software, there are companies that hire lead devs of open source software to work on it, etc. It's about what they do to it after acquisition. If they mistreat it and it's popular enough, it will be forked.
- toyg 5y ago
  Yup. In fact, one of the original intents of GNU licenses was to protect user freedoms in the context of codebases getting routinely bought and sold. There has never been any obligation to develop in the open. The internet barely existed, at that point.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
I'm assuming that's the company the bought Muse Score and seem to have locked it all behind paywalls. Seems they're iterating on taking people's open source/open license contributions, buying up the project and locking its value away for private gain. Is there a FOSS license that inhibits private ownership?
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Maybe they think they're Oracle.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  No license can inhibit private ownership. A license means "I own the thing, here is what you can do with it". It is based on private ownership. What can be done is to have all contributors transfer their rights to the FSF or a similar organization.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  There's a reason most open source licenses say they grant a "non-revocable" license. But that doesn't mean that the copyright holder has to release future updates under the same license, nor does it mean anything about their ownership of the associated trademarks (which you seem to be conflating with some kind of overall "ownership").
rattray 5y ago
Did you read the article? It sounds like a fantastic way to get full time engineering devoted to software that will stay free and open source, by a company that has a track record of making free and open source software for music professionals.
diydsp 5y ago
It is controversial. Extensive discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004688

> I wasn’t aware that Audacity had been acquired by The Muse Group recently. Am I the only one who thinks this the bigger scandal? An open source project sold to a company?

01100011 5y ago

So what? Audacity is LGPL. The company can't un-GPL it.

progre 5y ago
Since they have had most of the copyright for contributions assigned to them they can rewrite the few parts that they dont have copyright for and relicense the whole thing though.
- joosters 5y ago
  But so what? The fact that it is (or was) open source means that anyone can still take and re-use the code, regardless of whether it gets re-licensed in the future. The re-licensing prevents nothing.
  - progre 5y ago
    Sure, but forking it is a completely unneccesary duplication of efforts moving Audacity forward thats only motivated by the introduced telemetry.

input_sh 5y ago

What's the scandal? There are companies build enterprise features on top of open source software, there are companies that hire lead devs of open source software to work on it, etc. It's about what they do to it after acquisition. If they mistreat it and it's popular enough, it will be forked.

toyg 5y ago
Yup. In fact, one of the original intents of GNU licenses was to protect user freedoms in the context of codebases getting routinely bought and sold. There has never been any obligation to develop in the open. The internet barely existed, at that point.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

I'm assuming that's the company the bought Muse Score and seem to have locked it all behind paywalls. Seems they're iterating on taking people's open source/open license contributions, buying up the project and locking its value away for private gain. Is there a FOSS license that inhibits private ownership?

bbarnett 5y ago
Maybe they think they're Oracle.
GuB-42 5y ago
No license can inhibit private ownership. A license means "I own the thing, here is what you can do with it". It is based on private ownership. What can be done is to have all contributors transfer their rights to the FSF or a similar organization.
jfrunyon 5y ago
There's a reason most open source licenses say they grant a "non-revocable" license. But that doesn't mean that the copyright holder has to release future updates under the same license, nor does it mean anything about their ownership of the associated trademarks (which you seem to be conflating with some kind of overall "ownership").

rattray 5y ago

Did you read the article? It sounds like a fantastic way to get full time engineering devoted to software that will stay free and open source, by a company that has a track record of making free and open source software for music professionals.

diydsp 5y ago

It is controversial. Extensive discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004688