Information About Our New Contributor License Agreement #932
Replies: 59 comments 232 replies
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As noted in another ticket, this does not seem to be required anymore.
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I completely agree. I would have no problem with an iOS and/or Mac App Store exception. I am not okay with giving someone else unilateral permission to relicense code I write. Lax permissive licenses are one thing. Giving one company exclusive permission to bypass copyleft is another. |
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We did it once and we don't want to have to do it again. It's not just about Apple's App Store or things we want now. It's also about the permissions we might need in the future as new platforms and technologies emerge. What happens after the current contributors have moved on and we can't find them to contact them any more? Or if somebody dies, and we have to explain to their descendants what "open source" and the "GPL" means and why they should agree to allow us to add a special exception to it? The CLA means we have that permission in advance so we don't need to contact every single person. We will still be open with the community about what we are doing and try to take their views into consideration. If they are not happy with the result then they still have the ability to create a fork. |
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Are these platforms necessary, though? Is Audacity even usable on a tiny phone with fat-fingered touch control? I cannot even begin to imagine pin-pointing markers in the audio stream. Or on the PS5? Awkwardly control everything with a gamepad? Or Windows store, that hostile walled garden? I see exactly zero benefit for a CLA when it comes to more widespread platform support. But i'm also not a fan of the despotism and hostility of app stores like Android's or iOS's in general. Windows installer works fine, Linux packages work fine, macOS i don't care but apparently so far works fine, F-Droid will also work. No CLA necessary. Like… what market research implied any serious demand that outweighs the downsides of the CLA pointed-out to death here? |
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How about an iPad? https://www.apple.com/ios/garageband/ |
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@prokoudine Sadly i cannot give an unbiased and fair response to that, because i avoid anything apple hardware or software. Though if i think about other big touchpad devices, unless you use a pen, you still have the fat finger problem for precision audio stream marker placement. |
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I think most contributors will not be okay with this, can say so for myself right now. |
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Read as “change the GPL to proprietary license at our own will”. |
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Totally not okay. I will not be contributing any code under those terms. I guess it's time to fork. |
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In theory, this means one could (hypothetically speaking, of course) copy one module, two modules... all modules? of the software and call it another thing, under a closed-source license, as long is it used a different name than Audacity, no? |
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https://drewdevault.com/2018/10/05/Dont-sign-a-CLA.html
https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/12/DCO.html
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Sure it can. By not having a CLA and by relicensing Audacity under an even stricter FOSS license than the current one. Make it practically illegal for yourselves to ever close the source or add premium features. That'd be one way of stating it more clearly. On a side note: Until the recent developments around Audacity, i was not aware that the things collectively disliked here are already the status quo in MuseScore, including the telemetry i didn't know of! That made me uninstall MuseScore after… i don't remember how many years. (And unfixable UI glitches your telemetry cannot inform you of.) |
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How do you know for sure that it will "supercharge" development? |
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This only makes sense assuming the company will chose to keep focusing on the free Audacity. The problem is that while "Audacity will remain free", the company can essentially make it proprietary and call it something else. Past versions would remain free but one doesn't contribute for past versions. |
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Apparently your job title is 'head of strategy'; and yet here you are arguing with the very people you want to win over to make your product (for free) that you can sell (for profit). If that's what it takes to be 'head of strategy' at your company, I can't even imagine what the restrooms look like. Granted, they will still have less **** in them then what's coming out of your mouth, even if the janitors could only equal your level of excellence. |
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That's BS because you now own the trademark and can sell whatever "Audacity"-named Android/iOS apps you like. |
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and also
I would like to have the point of view of Richard Stallman on that particular point. |
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This is BS. Audacity is not AGPL. You can already provide arbitrary proprietary cloud services using Audacity code. You don't need a CLA for that.
I told you exactly how to do that without a CLA, by following Nextcloud's example. This excuse is also BS.
Now we're getting somewhere. What you're actually going to do is release proprietary mobile versions of Audacity, which is exactly what you did with MuseScore. And that is what you need a CLA for. Because the only reason you're going to keep core Audacity open is because you know that would just result in an insta-fork, but you're going to take every chance to create proprietary derivatives that you can monetize and control. What you're trying to do here is so transparent it's not even funny. I hope the community forks Audacity and the fork becomes the canonical, superior versions, much like happened with LibreOffice. And I hope the same thing happens to MuseScore, because people who continue to fraudulently (and illegally) charge royalties on copyrighted works without authorization of the copyright owners and distribute them to unrelated third parties are not to be trusted in a position of custodianship of a popular open source application. |
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well then why wasn't the community asked its opinion on this BEFORE Muse started waving its wad of cash around? We could have told you to not waste your time 6 months ago. The fact that a large number of core developers knew about this for months and kept their mouths shut until they had been paid, shows how rotten this project is. @Tantacrul you sir are a traitor to the FOSS community at large. |
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You did a video promoting the whole thing (which really feels like appropriation of a community project by now), and didn't stop once in there to talk about CLAs, telemetry, or similar stuff. Your position as a popular Youtuber means, intentionally or not, your reputation will be a factor in shaping the users' opinion in this matter. So your being "here" is inherently "doing something". |
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I hope you won't defend it by saying things like:
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Sure. The CLA text is a fucking year old, and this response here #880 (comment) implies that the CLA has been put in place around the time of take-over. But let's just roll with the usual corporate excuses.
I consider this take-over to be hostile and wish for a fork. If Muse group still wants to truly improve the FOSS forked version, their employees would likely still be welcome to submit PRs. Well, unless they are more garbage telemetry PRs. |
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I also would like to add to this. When I saw @Tantacrul's video in the matter I was excited for Audacity. I truly believed him when he spoke of making it better. I don't have much skin in the game. I use Audacity as a voice recorder from time to time. And I watched tanatacruls videos because he inspired me to think about my software and the user before implementing something. And IIRC he spoke of adding basic telemetry to collect crash reports and usage patterns. And I personally was sympathetic when he said that they were expecting pushback from a vocal minority of the community who were stuck in their ways and would resist change. The people who would defend their logo as if it was a religious symbol. I really thought he was going to have a hard time with the people who didn't want the project to evolve. Instead, I feel like I was misled by the video. The pushback the community is giving you guys is genuine and warranted. You just appropriate their project and are attempting to commercialize it. And the veil you're hiding behind is so transparent that anyone can see through. |
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Do you have any solid numbers on the amount of contributors that already signed the CLA? |
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Would anyone like to come forward and say they have? |
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They will replace / refactor the remaining lines I guess. |
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~30 contributors had a single commit of less than 10 lines of code. |
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Ok, and? They can GFTS? |
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I am simply conveying that there were a large number of single commits of few lines of code in sections already planned to be refactored and the time and effort required to get them to sign the CLA in those cases was less that replacing that amount of code. This was in answer to the 90% figure. |
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This is an appeal to tradition (or rather false authority), which neither takes into consideration the quality of said change, nor does it address the consequence of the change for the aforementioned projects and their users.
Whether you can release on the Apple App Store also depends on other factors (e.g. developer account). This is a questionable cause at best because a change in license or a specific agreement, not a CLA (which has more far reaching implications) is what enables one to release there. The "on-demand" relicensing or sublicensing is what should be particularly worrying for anyone reading this, as this implies complete control over everyone's contributions. While this might be all fine in a corporate context, it begs the question, why a longstanding project such as audacity actually needs it or would benefit from it. As far as I can see from what you write, the only benefiting party will be you and not "the community".
This is an appeal to poverty which comes across particularly weird when considering, that you chose this project and want to turn it into something else while generate money from it.
The appeal to novelty does not help over the fact, that also you will not always be able to "do the things [you] wanted to do" in the future and that this has zero to do with having a CLA. All in all this feels like putting lipstick on a pig and the entire argumentation does not sit well with me at all. I will not support Audacity if it adopts a CLA and do hope for a fork in that case. |
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@Tantacrul wtf are you doing? I love your channel and your content, however you seem to be constantly missing with every change with Audacity. Audacity is not a corporate project. Stop treating it as such and taking rights away from your contributors and users. You are this close to people just hard forking and moving there. |
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yea that looks like a seriously good alternative, also looks like it to do with a UI layout refresh and there's a a few places where it needs some polish but yea, good candidate. |
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Adding features to KWave could be another alternative. It is currently maintained but has not had much feature development in years. |
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How about ardour ? https://ardour.org/ |
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I am a long time Ardour user. And have to say very pleased with it overall, but it fills a different role to audacity, much more complex program with a much steeper learning curve. |
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Or even starting from scratch using Rust. ;) https://github.com/RustyDAW (I don't want to seem like I'm just self-plugging, but we do have a small organization started for a modular DAW-like ecosystem in Rust. It's still in its infancy, but I'm posting it in case there are people here who are interested in the project.) To be clear, we're more focused on a FL/Ableton Live alternative, but a lot of the same engine can be used for an Audacity alternative as well. |
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What you are doing is basically the antithesis of what Open Source stands for, and what allowed Audacity to be the open source success that it is. My biggest concern here is that by allowing you to use Closed Source licensing language, you will take the work of Open Source contributors and lock it away, where they will see no benefit. If you insist on handling an open source product like this and closed source it, unless all contributors share in the profit or the value (and lets be honest, they don't agree with close sourcing it anyways) then its basically theft. |
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yea this is exactly what the community have been complaining about for the last month. NO. work around it. This is a FOSS project, it is against the intentions of the license code has been contributed under to dual or re licence this project. Keep FOSS FOSS! |
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yea thats exactly the point of the GPL. stopping Open source code from benefiting corperations, without them contributing it back. |
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The problem is more that you admit that any new code you are writing here is not for the sole use in Audacity or free software projects. There would be no other reason to you needing to own the code in it's entirety. This undermines the whole purpose of Audacity having a GPL license. The CLA gives you ownership to do whatever you want with it, including using it in closed source software. I think Muse as a company should respect the license, like everybody else has to, instead of working around it for their own commercial gain. |
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It is unfair for anyone contributing that Muse, and Muse alone gets to use this code in non-free proprietary software projects because they bought the rights to it and duped a bunch of old contributors into signing a CLA. I see no reason for anyone external to contribute at that point with that horrible power dynamic in place. |
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@Joshua-Ashton, you are entitled to your opinions, but not everybody shares them. Current contributors have signed the CLA and stated their support for the direction the project is heading. |
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Less of an opinion, more of the fact I've seen several projects die like this before :) |
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@shoogle Problem is, these contributors are apparently now on Muse's payroll or got paid off once or so. May have signed NDAs and other stuff we don't know of. So best case the stated support is honest. Worst case, it's all just propaganda. And given that commercial interest is explicitly involved, the propaganda scenario seems more likely for outstanders. |
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This is the exact thing that everyone in #835 was angry about. As has been explained outright countless times, Audacity is not a product to monetise, it is a project supported by a community. You do not own it. |
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Frankly if this is the strings Muse's money comes with then they should pack up and leave, the project has survived fine for 22 years without external funding. |
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They do, in fact, legally own the Audacity trademarks (name, logos), as well as the copyright for any contributions that they have made. They purchased it. That said, the CLA is not asking developers to give away ownership of their contributions, only to license their contributions to Muse. Which is kind of what was already happening, just not officially and in writing. It's most likely something that Muse's lawyers asked for (because they don't want to deal with copyright lawsuits). |
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What's currently happening is people licensing their code under the GPLv3 as per the license of Audacity. There is no CLA required for that to work. In fact, many big open source projects don't have one (like Linux). What the CLA here does is grant Muse the right to sub-license the contribution - i.E. use the contribution in a proprietary way, like making non-public changes and distributing the resulting binaries w/o a GPL notice or any obligation to make the changes public. If Muse simply wanted assurance that people submit their code willingly to be licensed under the GPL and assure that they only submit code they are allowed to do that with, there are better, less intrusive ways. |
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I might be missing something, but the questions in 880 still haven't been answered, have they? With zero contributions to the project, I have absolutely no shots to call here. I would still like to express that at this point, I consider this entire thing a hostile takeover and I do hope for a coordinated fork of Audacity. I would like to see the important members of the community agreeing on a new project name and logo, then creating a GitHub organization with a hand full of community-elected users as members, also inviting all previous core contributors to become part of it as well. But again, that's just me. All the best, everyone. |
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Answered: #880 (comment) |
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You still have not answered the two most important questions: who and what. Who is in charge of audacity? What are you going to do with it. Linking to the mu.se site is not an answer. There is no information there. @Tantacrul made a youtube video stating "I'm now in charge of Audacity. Seriously." Now that decisions are being made that are unpopular he has to consult with other people. You have not provided a single straightforward answer to any real questions. As has been stated before Audacity is GPL2+ already. It has been weeks since the questions were asked and your non-answers should be all the information the community needs. @falkTX Fork it. I will help with web and docs. |
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Well you can count me out of contributing any code. |
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I won't be contributing any further technical advice or code review either. |
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Your FAQ claims that Audacity will remain “free and open source”. But words are cheap, so you need to back this up in the CLA itself. Because that is the binding document. Sadly there’s nothing like that in the CLA. On the contrary, it gives you the right to “use the Contributions in any way” enabling you to change Audacity’s licence at any time to anything you decide – be it FLOSS, another flavour of open source or full blown closed down proprietary. Considering that the FAQ starts to sound rather hollow. Concrete question: Will you change the CLA to guarantee that at least one of Audacity’s licences will always be GPL? |
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Tbh. I couldn´t trust them if they did. |
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deleting trash comments is not abuse, it is cleanup. |
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My mistake, forget what I said here. |
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I very much appreciate that the MUSECY/audacity team discusses issues like this openly and asks the wider community. I hope this will continue in the future even though it can be near flame-war frustrating experience. What I find somewhat concerning is that I do not see any feedback or criticism from developers who actually contributed significant code to audacity (ie the target group of this CLA). Is it correct to assume that all those are fine with the terms as-is? Have there been no request for changes, or have I missed some in this long thread? |
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This is comedy in this stage :)
They signed tight NDA´s and the CLA. |
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They don´t ask or discuss a single thing.
The only thing for me to stay sane is to finally de subscribe - which I finally do now. |
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I contributed significantly to the source and you can read my comment/reasoning for licensing my contributions to Muse above. I don't speak for any other contributors, but I don't blame them for staying out of this flame-fest. The CLA being described here is for contributions going forward. |
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Thanks for the heads up. Everyone is of course free to license their code as they wish. I was just surprised that criticism so far came exclusively from "outsiders", and suggestions or alternatives discussed here were not commented on by those to whom the CLA is addressed to. It seems that there are some proposals here that could both satisfy the user-community as well as corporate interests. Probably too late now. |
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Contributors are not the only ones that can be affected by this CLA implementation. With Muse Group having the power to relicense Audacity under as proprietary software, as a whole or in part, users' concern are very much legitimate. We have seen multiple example of how this was abused and do not wish to witness it again. Free software, especially copyleft, is not about protecting the developers, who otherwise has complete control of the software and thus the users. |
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This goes against the principles of free software. The X Window System Trapby Richard M. Stallman To copyleft or not to copyleft? That is one of the major controversies in the free software community. The idea of copyleft is that we should fight fire with fire—that we should use copyright to make sure our code stays free. The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) is one example of a copyleft license. Some free software developers prefer noncopyleft distribution. Noncopyleft licenses such as the XFree86 and BSD licenses are based on the idea of never saying no to anyone—not even to someone who seeks to use your work as the basis for restricting other people. Noncopyleft licensing does nothing wrong, but it misses the opportunity to actively protect our freedom to change and redistribute software. For that, we need copyleft. For many years, the X Consortium was the chief opponent of copyleft. It exerted both moral suasion and pressure to discourage free software developers from copylefting their programs. It used moral suasion by suggesting that it is not nice to say no. It used pressure through its rule that copylefted software could not be in the X Distribution. Why did the X Consortium adopt this policy? It had to do with their conception of success. The X Consortium defined success as popularity—specifically, getting computer companies to use the X Window System. This definition put the computer companies in the driver's seat: whatever they wanted, the X Consortium had to help them get it. Computer companies normally distribute proprietary software. They wanted free software developers to donate their work for such use. If they had asked for this directly, people would have laughed. But the X Consortium, fronting for them, could present this request as an unselfish one. “Join us in donating our work to proprietary software developers,” they said, suggesting that this is a noble form of self-sacrifice. “Join us in achieving popularity,” they said, suggesting that it was not even a sacrifice. But self-sacrifice is not the issue: tossing away the defense that copyleft provides, which protects the freedom of the whole community, is sacrificing more than yourself. Those who granted the X Consortium's request entrusted the community's future to the goodwill of the X Consortium. This trust was misplaced. In its last year, the X Consortium made a plan to restrict the forthcoming X11R6.4 release so that it would not be free software. They decided to start saying no, not only to proprietary software developers, but to our community as well. There is an irony here. If you said yes when the X Consortium asked you not to use copyleft, you put the X Consortium in a position to license and restrict its version of your program, along with the code for the core of X. [...] At the same time, it is better if we do not feel too much need for popularity. When a businessman tempts you with “more popularity,” he may try to convince you that his use of your program is crucial to its success. Don't believe it! If your program is good, it will find many users anyway; you don't need to feel desperate for any particular users, and you will be stronger if you do not. You can get an indescribable sense of joy and freedom by responding, “Take it or leave it—that's no skin off my back.” Often the businessman will turn around and accept the program with copyleft, once you call the bluff. Friends, free software developers, don't repeat old mistakes! If we do not copyleft our software, we put its future at the mercy of anyone equipped with more resources than scruples. With copyleft, we can defend freedom, not just for ourselves, but for our whole community. Read the words of Stallman, and take a good look in the mirror. If anybody reads this has made non-trivial contributions, or knows somebody who did, |
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Audacity does not need:
... when the only supposed tangible benefit to Audacity, when you cut out all those useless features, is, supposedly, allegedly, a better UI/UX. But Audacity can be, or could've been:
It's probably too late to rectify any of this, at this point. This wasn't a "discussion" so much as it was an "announcement," wasn't it? You even got the contributors to sign NDAs so they can't even talk about it, according to comments above. The deal is done. This project is "free as in beer, not as in liberty," and there's nothing anyone can do other than fork it, and hope that fork takes off. I will say I've become unsurprisingly cynical of open source as of late. It seems that everyone views everything as a hustle. All anyone sees is dollar signs; exploitable, untapped resources to fuel the pathological drive for infinite growth and metrics so they can be the next Facebook. A tool can't just be a tool, it has to be a live service with cloud integration where you have to have a web account on some random website you pay $20 a month for, just for the privilege of doing something basic like editing audio, which was something we'd basically perfected 20 years ago. It'd be pathetic if it wasn't so harmful and viciously successful. |
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Wouldn't relicensing under the MIT license do all of what is wanted? Also there are GPL'd programs on the App Store, like Wordpress. Also you can create proprietary cloud services with GPL'd code. |
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The problematic part of the new CLA is obviously this part:
"Any way" is way too broad. If you really intend to only use the new CLA as you promise, then spell it out in the legal.
If these points become part of the CLA, then IMHO most pepple shouldn't/wouldn't have a problem with it. You'll show that you have no hidden agenda, while still allowing you to reach the goals that you described as the motivations for the CLA. This is a must so that your promises become binding. With true intentions, you should have no problem with that. |
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My mistake. I double posted my previous comment because I though somebody was deleting it, but they were not, just hidden by GitHub. I stand corrected: nobody deleted it. |
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This absolutely indicates that this CLA should not be accepted. iOS as a platform perpetuates restrictive code signing practices and seeking to support it by submitting to Apple's terms is not acceptable. The fact that GPLv3 keeps code off iOS should be seen as a feature, not a bug. This explicitly indicates that you intend to licence the code under licences other than GPLv3. |
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I do not condone Apple's practices regarding its app store and related restrictions, but we need a decision based on what is best for Audacity and its users, not based on how we can teach Apple a lesson. As long as the same code for Audacity that was published on the Apple platform remains available under GPL (or a similar open-source licence) too, I'd be okay with an alternative licence for iOS and macOS. |
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It is not a question of "teaching Apple a lesson". I simply do not regard targeting this platform as ethical. |
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No, the important part is /not/ that you can get a copy of the code with GPL. The important part is that you can /only/ get it with GPL. Otherwise, you lose the whole point of a copyleft license. |
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I was wrong and nobody deleted my comment. Sorry for my mistake and for the double-posting. The problematic part of the new CLA is obviously this part:
"Any way" is way too broad. If you promise that you won't misuse our trust then write down your promises explicitly in the legal part of the CLA so that it becomes binding.
If you include these points then you'll still be able to reach your goals that motivated you to add a CLA, and it will show everybody that you have good intentions. |
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I can still see your first two comments. |
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My mistake. I double posted my previous comment because I though somebody was deleting it, but they were not, just hidden by GitHub. I stand corrected: nobody deleted it and I'm sorry. |
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Everyone is obsessed with the copyleft implications, which… honestly, whatever – my natural expectation when contributing to anything is that the owners of the project get to do anything with it – the fact that I retain ownership of my contributions always takes me by surprise. Screw that, my concern with CLAs is always the signing process. I don't see anything about it in the OP here. So many CLAs have a signing form that demands personal info – from a "real name" to a goddamn physical postal address. I absolutely hate that. |
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Same... I'd rather live in a world where all my commits are public domain than attach my personal information to my code. |
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https://www.audacityteam.org/cla/ seems like the choice has already been made. |
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Using google forms, of course |
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As pointed out earlier, this "discussion" seems to be more of an exercise in virtue signalling, than in transparency. The CLA announcement could have been done on the website. It's not like anything about this topic was ever up for debate anyways and the format of github discussions leaves readers with the impression that it's... well, a discussion and not a statement. The sad conclusion about using Google Forms for collecting contributor information is, that it is as tone deaf as the decision to try and use Google Analytics and Yandex in #835 and in effect will drive outside contributors away (if there are still any willing to contribute under these terms). |
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"You also represent that You are not legally obligated, whether by entering into an agreement or otherwise, in any way that conflicts with the terms of this license." no copyleft-licenced code allowed better start cleanrooming a lot of code yesterday |
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Now that the CLA has been instated, has anyone made a fork of this that I can contribute to? |
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I'm willing to know the same. |
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This one has been mentioned in a previous comment: https://github.com/yonderbread/foss_audacity |
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I'm the brazilian portuguese translator of Audacity for almost 20 years and I'll retreat every line of code from the actual project. I defy this new team to show where, when or how I was contacted or agreed to this nefarious CLA. Not by mail, but signed and notarized (the only form the Brazilian law will recognize such agreement). |
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Trying to "retreat"/rescind the contributions seems a bit much even in this I think that a better way to punish such shenanigans would be to sue for And regardless of the above, I would consider this repository tainted/corrupted |
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and others
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Following multiple discussions across various threads in Audacity GitHub repo, we are creating this topic to keep all relevant conversations focused in a single location.
For those not yet aware, we are introducing a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), which contributors to Audacity will need to sign in order to contribute code to the project.
Full text of the CLA may be found below the FAQs.
Audacity's source code is currently released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). We intend to update the license to GPLv3 to enable support for new technologies not compatible with GPLv2 (i.e. - VST3, which is compatible with GPLv3).
Although we may choose any license for the code that we have written ourselves, we do not have this ability when it comes to code written by additional contributors. The purpose of the CLA is to provide future flexibility in altering (i.e. - uplicensing, dual licensing) for the entire Audacity project, not just the parts of the code that we have written ourselves.
Our sister project, MuseScore, another open source audio-related application, recently completed the process of updating licensing to GPLv3. This provides another reason for updating Audacity's license: we would like to make it easier to share code between Audacity and MuseScore. Naturally, Audacity will remain free and open source with no artificial limitations or paid tiers.
Finally, we wish to make Audacity available to everyone, which means releasing it on all platforms and through as many distribution channels as possible. Unfortunately, some platforms have policies or technical processes that make it difficult or impossible for Audacity to exist on them while it is licensed solely under the GPL (v2 or v3). Apple's App Store on iOS and macOS is one example of this, which is the reason that VLC Media Player was removed from the store back in 2011. (VLC returned to the AppStore later but not under the GPL.)
The CLA provides the ability to release Audacity under multiple licenses, which will enable us to release it on the App Store while still making the code available under the GPL. This will ensure that an even wider audience is able to appreciate the wonderful piece of open source software that is Audacity.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q. Will Audacity remain open source?
A. Yes. Audacity was, is, and always will be 100% open source and free in every sense.
The CLA also allows us to use the code in other products that may not be open source, which we intend to do at some point to support the continued development of Audacity. We can already do this with the code we write ourselves, but the CLA allows us to do it with our contributors' code too. This is necessary because community code and internal code often get mixed in ways that are difficult to separate later on.
Right now we're new to Audacity, so we haven't written much code yet, but that will quickly change. If you look at our other open source project, MuseScore, over 80% of code line changes (insertions + deletions) on that project have been made by people who are or were members of the internal team. We cannot allow the fact that we accept contributions from the community to become a disadvantage that prevents us from using our code in other products.
Q. Will you create a paid version of Audacity?
A. No. We will not create a paid version of Audacity. We will not introduce limitations in the free version that you have to pay to unlock. It is to everyone's benefit that Audacity remains free and open source, including ours.
We will likely offer separate cloud services that Audacity users can take advantage of if they choose. These services will fund the future development of Audacity, in much the same way that MuseScore.com funds the development of MuseScore composition software.
Q. How is it possible to introduce a CLA to a project that is more than 20 years old?
A. People who have contributed considerable amounts of code have already been asked to sign the CLA, and the vast majority have now done so. Over 90% of all written code is already covered by the CLA, and we are now asking the few remaining people to sign as well as all new contributors. It is not necessary for every single person who ever contributed to sign the CLA; only people who made a non-trivial contribution that is still present in the current source code have to sign, as well as all new contributors.
Q. How do you respond to those who believe that a CLA is against the spirit of the GPL?
A. We do not believe that this is against the spirit of the GPL. CLAs are not uncommon in free and open source software (FOSS). Apache, Django, Joomla, OpenJS, Python and QT all have CLAs. The Free Software Foundation (authors of the GPL) ask their contributors to assign copyright to the FSF or disclaim copyright entirely, which is more than we are asking for in Audacity's CLA. Under our CLA, contributors retain copyright to their code and are free to use it however they like.
Q. How does the CLA benefit the community?
A. The CLA enables us to release Audacity on platforms that we wouldn't otherwise be able to release on, such as within Apple's App Store. It also enables us to change the project license in the future, should the need arise. For example, we might decide to switch to a different open source license to take advantage of a new technology that is incompatible with the current license, like when we switched MuseScore's license from GPLv2 to GPLv3 to enable support for VST3. Alternatively, we might decide to dual-license certain parts of the code under a permissive license in order to create an open standard that is usable across all audio applications.
Q. What if I want to contribute but I don't want to sign the CLA?
A. Unfortunately, signing the CLA is a necessary requirement if you want to contribute to the Audacity project. If we allow code into Audacity that is not covered by the CLA, we would be opening ourselves up to the possibility of being blocked from distributing Audacity on other platforms (eg: Apple).
Q. What does this mean for Audacity's development?
A. The CLA provides a way for us to fund the future development of Audacity without us having to charge for Audacity itself. We will be working on Audacity full time, so we need some form of income.
The old Audacity team consisted entirely of volunteers working on it in their spare time, which meant that they weren't always able to do the things they wanted to do. New features arrived every now and then over the last 20 years, but on the whole progress was slow. Audacity looks much the same today as it did decades ago. It needs a fresh look, and it needs to be updated to use modern technologies and interaction methods, not to mention newer coding standards. This can only happen if there is a team of professional developers, designers, and testers working full time on the project.
Our team will be constantly working to improve Audacity's open source code, not to mention reviewing pull requests submitted by the community. As a result of this, Audacity's development will happen faster and the quality of the user experience will be better, yet the program will remain open source and completely free for all users.
We are bringing in people with the right skills to make Audacity the best audio editing program in the world, and not just the best free program either! We have already assembled a team of extremely talented people, but there's room for a few more. Let us know if you think you could be one of them!
Q. I have already submitted code that is waiting to be merged. What should I do now?
A. We are setting up a new system where contributors can create an account or submit a form (most likely on audacityteam.org) in order to sign the CLA. In the meantime, we will manually send the CLA agreement to contributors, who will need to sign it and send it back to us in order to have their code merged.
Contributor License Agreement
Thank you for your interest in contributing to Audacity. This page describes the established guidelines for contributions of code, patches and artwork to Audacity.
In order to clarify the intellectual property license granted with contributions from any person or entity, Audacity must have a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) on file that has been signed by each Contributor, indicating agreement to certain license terms. This license is not only for the protection of the contributors themselves, but also for the protection of the project and its users; it does not change your rights to use your own Contributions for any other purpose.
All past and future contributors of non-trivial amounts of code (more than just a line or two) to Audacity are required to sign the CLA. If somebody is unable to sign the document, their contribution will not be accepted or will be removed from Audacity.
Version 1.0 – May 1, 2020
You and Audacity agree:
You grant MUSECY SM LTD, an affiliate of MuseScore and Ultimate Guitar, (“Company”) the ability to use the Contributions in any way. You hereby grant to Company , a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such derivative works.
You are able to grant Company these rights. You represent that You are legally entitled to grant the above license. If Your employer has rights to intellectual property that You create, You represent that You have received permission to make the Contributions on behalf of that employer, or that Your employer has waived such rights for the Contributions.
The Contributions are your original work. You represent that the Contributions are Your original works of authorship, and to Your knowledge, no other person claims, or has the right to claim, any right in any invention or patent related to the Contributions. You also represent that You are not legally obligated, whether by entering into an agreement or otherwise, in any way that conflicts with the terms of this license. For example, if you have signed an agreement requiring you to assign the intellectual property rights in the Contributions to an employer or customer, that would conflict with the terms of this license.
Company determines the code that is in the Company project. You understand that the decision to include the Contribution in any project or source repository is entirely that of Company, and this agreement does not guarantee that the Contributions will be included in any product.
No Implied Warranties. Company acknowledges that, except as explicitly described in this Agreement, the Contribution is provided on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
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