MuseScore 3.6
musescore.org
musescore.org
Without polemics or politics, this ends up presenting one of the strongest moral arguments for open source licensing.
I guess only free software can buck the commercial mandate enough to do that now.
[spoiler] Here is fresh story to learn: OCAD (commercial app) VS OpenOrienteering Mapper (FLOSS alternative to OCAD).[0,1]
TL;DR: If you are trying to create fully free alternative to proprietary software, be ready to the situation where original proprietary software devs would decide to clone[2] unique/original features[3] from your FLOSS app.
[0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1347209330089717760
[1] https://twitter.com/zerbembasqwibo/status/134946732900922573...
[2] https://www.ocad.com/wiki/ocad/en/index.php?title=Sketch&act...
[3] https://www.openorienteering.org/news/2012/colors-and-sketch...
First, it is good that software feature ideas aren't copyrightable. Arguably many of them shouldn't even be patentable.
That means that yes, proprietary apps can look at your software and say, "that's cool, we should do that too." But it also means that people can write Open Source software that takes lessons from proprietary apps. We want software devs working on productivity tools and practical software to copy each other, we don't want everyone to reinvent the wheel all the time.
I mean, heck, can you imagine if Finale came out with a new feature and that was just it, no other competitors or Open Source apps like MuseScore were allowed to offer that feature? Can you imagine trying to build a piece of software like Blender in that world, where Autodesk had a monopoly on "things that a 3D editor can do?"
Second, 9 years to clone a feature in the world of software is a really long time. If you can launch a piece of software and you have 9 years before other people start building similar things... I mean, what else do you even want at that point? If it takes 9 years for a dev to capitalize on a unique feature in their app, I don't think it's the eventual imitators that are the problem.
I may agree from FLOSS dev side (as I'm itself!), BUT there already was a lot of cases where UI/UX features "was copyrighted".[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer%2C_Inc%2E_v%2E_...
> The court ruled that, "Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]...". In the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit, Xerox also sued Apple alleging that Mac's GUI was heavily based on Xerox's. The district court dismissed Xerox's claims without addressing whether Apple's GUI infringed Xerox's. Apple lost all claims in the Microsoft suit except for the ruling that the trash can icon and folder icons from Hewlett-Packard's NewWave windows application were infringing. The lawsuit was filed in 1988 and lasted four years; the decision was affirmed on appeal in 1994, and Apple's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied.
And then later on:
> After the district court ruled in favor of Microsoft, Apple appealed the decision arguing that the district court only considered infringements on the individual elements of Apple's GUI, rather than the interface as a whole. The appeals court almost entirely affirmed the ruling of the district court, establishing that, "almost all the similarities spring either from the license or from basic ideas and their obvious expression... illicit copying could occur only if the works as a whole are virtually identical."
I'm not going to say that copyright expansion isn't a problem, and in general I think that software patents are a giant problem. But surely the answer to that isn't to encourage more expansion or to treat competitors cloning good features like it's something to be avoided.
We should be holding up cases like this as an example of why proprietary developers can't get monopolies on ideas, and we should be normalizing that way of thinking about software. It's not a problem if a proprietary app copies an interface idea from an Open Source app because interface and feature ideas are not copyrightable. We should reinforce in culture that already recognized legal standard whenever possible.
I'm just saying that proprietary/commercial devs already tried to fight for its UI/UX: some wins (due to curios resons), some loose.
As for me, I fully agree on UX/UI should not be copyrighted at all.
That being said, I would not overly romanticize FOSS' achievements in that arena. The lack of investment beyond merely writing functional code and the lack of opinionated design shows in many FOSS products, beyond the point of it being "geared towards repeat users / experts".
A lot of it just has extremely inconsistent interfaces that not only leave visual styling trends but also basic design principles founded upon human perception by the wayside, and that costs everyone, novices and experts.
Additionally, there seems to be a bit of resurgence in productivity apps that favor more keyboard-oriented workflows, or at least also think about how people can become faster and more efficient after the initial onboarding.
I would say… sure, that may be true for many apps. There are plenty of counterexamples, and I’d say MuseScore’s competitors (Finale, Sibelius, Dorico) are good examples of apps that are not tailored towards first-use experience as much as they are tailored for heavy users. They heavily rely on keyboard shortcuts and are modal (often to the point of being arcane, but UX is hard).
Tantacrul's other videos on engraving software UX show some great examples of this, where improvements in UX can help without lowering the productivity plateau for experts (except of course throwing them back if you were to change what they've gotten used to from one version to the next).
Dorico is an interesting case. I'm curious how they were funded. The general trend with these creative fields is that the labor force is oversaturated and made more liquid with the gig economy, so better productivity is no longer economically motivated.
> I'm curious how they were funded.
The story of Dorico is pretty simple. Avid bought Sibelius back in 2006 because they needed a good score writing solution—Avid presumably wanted to provide a “complete solution”—but Avid closed the office, and the same team of developers then made Dorico which was bought by Steinberg for presumably the same reasons that Avid bought Sibelius.
Take a look at film/TV scoring, which is where a big chunk of the money is for working composers. There are three main DAWs in use: Pro Tools, Cubase, and Logic Pro. It makes a ton of sense that you’d want to have a score writing program to sell alongside your DAW, so Avid and Steinberg did that by acquiring existing software. Logic Pro can… sort of… already edit scores. Logic is not nearly on the level of a proper score writing program but it’s still fairly solid and works for composition.
> The general trend with these creative fields is that the labor force is oversaturated and made more liquid with the gig economy, so better productivity is no longer economically motivated.
This doesn’t follow at all. If you’re a freelance composer or transcriber, then even marginal improvements in productivity can more or less be thought of as pay raises or additional free time. If you’re doing a proper TV or film production, then you might have something like 10% of your entire budget set aside for music.
Composers aren’t really interchangeable anyway—if you want someone to make a decent score for your TV show, then you can’t find them on Fiverr.
My general impression is that when you meet someone who is a professional in a particular field—even if that field is not highly paid—then a $600 business expense that improves productivity is not hard to justify.
I was a theory and comp major back in the early 90s, and I used Finale to do a few small engraving commissions and to make big band and wind ensemble charts back then. It took a long time, but with work I was able to achieve pretty much what I wanted. Some of the other tools I checked out, I immediately thought, "I can't do that? No way, that's totally unacceptable."
Also, he's like George W. Williams of font editing software ;)
I usually am working with just a keyboard, bass and I handle the rythmn seperately.
To do my melody I find Muse Score to be way slower at producing MIDI. I actually use ABC Notation in VIM. I can do a whole song in under 5 minutes after using this for years. Its all texted based and as a old programmer I prefer the text to the GUI. I don't have an symphony and so that is why it is over kill for me.
ABCNotion is just a text based notation program. Once I have that I can just move it to whatever format I want.
As for me, MuseScore now took 2nd place (just after Blender, which keep 1st place) on my Top FLOSS software projects lists.
P.S. The only issue, as for me, that MuseScore 4[1] (WIP) UI would be switched to QML (JavaScript). I tried its latest nightly builds — it looks like common Electron apps & for me its UI/UX looks horrible.
Guess, I would stuck to MuseScore 3.x forever.
[0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1350904572450123778 [video]
Just fixed it in my comment as well.
P.S. JFTR, Why You changed the order of links in your comment?
But, as I has an 10 y/o laptop with integrated, any heavy JavaScript GUI apps (based on QML/Electron) just slowed down performance instead of increasing, in comparison to Qt-based or native GUI apps.
Yes, I know as an owner of Symbian 9.x device ;)
But, here I literally means that actual QML coding style stuck to requirement of modern GPU with OpenGL 2.x (GL ES 2.x) even OpenGL 3/4 support.
My laptop has integrated GPU mostly limited to OpenGL 1.x, so all those CSS/QSS animations, which depends on higher OpenGL features, just blows my CPU/GPU into flame.
1ghz embedded devices with semi-good GPUs*
e.g. the GPU in a Pi 3 blows some older intel GMA chips out of the water, and those are still quite present "out there". Even a 4ghz pentium 4 with such a GPU will feel slower to the user than a 800mhz Pi (which in itself, is not what I'd call enjoyable to use).
If the app is badly optimised it's going to be slow regardless of the rendering method.
:)
JFTR, My actual Top5 list of FLOSS apps is:
1. MuseScore
2. Blender
3. SolveSpace
4. AzPainter
5. OpenOrienteering Mapper
No, I'm NOT forgot to add it ;P
I just use AzPainter[0,1] for painting, due to it is much faster & much more compact in comparison to Krita, even to GIMP.
And that is why AzPainter is on my Top list ;)
I prefer GUI apps over CLI/scripting.
SolveSpace is my main 2D/3D CAD since SolveSpace 2.0 became[0] FLOSS. (previously used KOMPAS-3D, but it is proprietary)
Now I'm QA (tester) & i18n (localization) contributor to the SolveSpace development for 6 years now, so you may ask me anything about it.
Itself I'm a teacher of design and technology, with a bachelor degree in technical drawing & CGI + master degree in PM, so really like to take part in FLOSS development as UI/UX QA & PM, see my profile on GitHub[1]
In last 20 years for curious reasons also I use OpenSCAD QCAD/LibreCAD, FreeCAD and a lot of other FLOSS CAx & GIS apps from-time-to-time (mostly for testing & bug reporting).
> What do you use it for?
For all CAD-related works (see my #DailySolveSpace[1] resources): solid 3D modeling & producing 2D drawings, simple CAE analyzing, etc.
JFTR, I'm moderator of /r/SolveSpace sub on Reddit too.
[0] https://librearts.org/2013/08/solvespace-released-under-gpl/
From limited experience, notation programs require you to enter exact note duration without the ability to go back and make changes. (ie if you change a 1/2 note to a 1/4 note, you will be left with an extra 1/4 rest with no way of removing it.)
I wonder if there is a music notation woftware which allows you to just enter all the notes first, then you can go back and edit the duration- then it will calculate the measures for you.
MuseScore supports the reverse of that workflow - you can enter the durations of notes and rests initially, then go back and "repitch" the notes in a second pass.
I remember many years ago using a Windows scorewriter (possibly this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoteWorthy_Composer) which placed notes into bars itself, based on their duration. If you went back and deleted, inserted or modified a note, the whole score would then reflow accordingly, much like wordwrap in a word processor.
Dorico works like that. It automatically rebars the music so you don't have to think about it.
My own music-notation editor, Soundslice, doesn't automatically rebar, but it has a "we're all consenting adults" attitude about note durations within a bar, allowing you to add a lot of notes in a bar and worry about their durations later.
It would definitely be cool to export, but import sounds inherently lossy if what I said above is true.
I hope that they are considering to build a sheet music hosting platform as an open alternative to the now "rogue" MuseScore. Sorely missed.
I'm not in any position to judge them for wanting to make more money but it sure feels like a way to kill off your userbase.
[1] https://www.scoringnotes.com/news/ultimate-guitar-acquires-m...
So I'm not sure there's much of a distinction at this point.
>> "We are also building up the MuseScore development team to help the developer community improve MuseScore’s desktop and mobile products quicker. The improvements we work on will continue to be based on the community’s feedback. For example, among other things, there have been numerous requests to improve the functionality of the mobile apps and the quality of the soundfont’s audio. As a result, we have already established a dedicated mobile development team and hired a soundfont specialist to focus on improving these areas. And in case you’re wondering, yes, of course the notation editor will continue to be open source and free."
And this appears to grant the company rights to any code people contribute in case they decide to close the source going forward: https://musescore.org/en/cla
The situation is this: Musescore.com was about to get shut down because of massive copyright infringement. The future of MS Editor would be unclear under those circumstances. After the acquisition, we’ve made deals with all major music publishers plus thousands of independent publishers to license its offering. The downside of the process is that we had to takedown about 1% of the catalog (however the current offering grew x2 since then).
Upside is this: 1. Catalog is still free for everyone 2. Downloads are restricted just for copyrighted songs, because 3. Copyright owners get paid for their content since then 4. Original and public domain songs have no download restriction 5. Since acquisition the team behind MuseScore grew x7 times, as well as open source contributor community grew x2. 6. We are at 3.6 version now, which is the last stable version before 4.x, which is coming this year 7. 4.x will likely feature major workflow improvements, playback improvements, VST support etc.
I’m happy to answer all your questions.
The articles I read on this at the time were putting it in quite a negative light, that must have had an impact on my judgement - either way, I'm happy that you're successful with this model and that you can make scoring music more accessible with your open source software. (I've used musescore from middle school through university, so it's definitely had an impact on me!)
Apologies for making unsubstantiated comments and thanks for clarifying.
I'm happy to see that the MusE DAW seems also to have resumed development after a very long hiatus / dry-spell. While not as feature-filled in most respects as bigger free software DAWs like Ardour, it has a more conventional piano roll interface with a few QoL features, which is why I preferred it for some time before switching to Ardour and getting over Ardour's sub-standard piano-roll.
Until 2002 MuseScore was just a part of MusE.[0]
Another program I am greatly enjoying is Synthesia particularly because I can drop in any MIDI file exported from MuseScore and learn to play it there.
Sythesia’s keyboard and note tracking is much better than the MuseScore app, and it’s $8 once to fully unlock which is pricing I love.
The other app I’ve used is Noteflight, which I’ve used to simplify some songs that my daughter really wanted to play, to make them easier but still sound mostly right.
There is a relationship between them, but it's a bit mysterious exactly what it is. The boundaries are somewhat blurred. For example, there is a search box on musescore.org that goes to musescore.com.
It's also not clear whether paying for musescore.com funds the open source project.
If so, report details about those iOS/Android apps to MuseScore devs team on Twitter[0,1]
I setup a discord channel for the project https://discord.gg/a5ttYuG
It would be better if You would just create separate "Show HN" thread to highlight you project, see[0]