Now that Muse has acquired Audacity, what does this mean to the end user?
Will the Muse version of Audacity remain free?
Can other developers work on separate Audacity projects and release them?
A new broom sweeps clean, so the saying goes - will this happen to this forum and Audacity itself.
I’m not a lawyer or expert but basically, GPL open source software HAS to remain open source (even if modified/updated). [u]Audacity License[/u]. It can be sold but anybody compile and distribute it (free or for a price).
There is a registered trademark so my understanding is that if somebody modifies it and makes their own version they can’t use the trademark/name. The modified version also has to be open-source.
End users are likely to see bug fixes happen more quickly, new features developed more quickly, and more frequent releases.
It’s not really a “muse version” - it’s still “Audacity”. Yes, it will remain free.
Yes, no change there.
Provided that they respect the terms of the GPL license and respect the Audacity trademark, other developers can work on separate Audacity projects, or contribute directly to Audacity. For contributing to Audacity, see: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
Are you a developer?
This forum is supported by musegroup, it runs on their servers, but is primarily a community resource. musegroup are happy to see it continue.
The license terms place some requirements on anyone distributing modified versions. Primarily, the modified version must remain open source under the same, or a compatible license, and the modified source code must be freely available.
The main Audacity app is currently released under the terms of the GPL v2 license, though some specific files have separate (compatible) license terms (particularly some of the libraries used by Audacity). Most of the code is licensed under “GPL v2 or later”.
The full text of the GPL v2 license is here: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/master/LICENSE.txt