Shinycroak

(Written on 5 July 2021) The music software MuseScore and Audacity are owned by Ultimate Guitar, a Russian corporation. The software is under GPL, but no-one trusts the Russians to respect privacy or any other human rights and of course UG can change the license at any time. The ownership of free software is a major blemish in Stallman's “use copyright to protect the freedom of the software” approach – there is always still an owner. The character of the owner is important, as is their disposition of the work, should the owner die or transfer the rights. The character of rightsholders has to be a part of our measures of freedom and openness in software development. ✺✺✺ PS: (29 November 2021) Since that time, the new owners of MuseScore and Audacity have set up shell companies in Cyprus which nominally own the software and implemented a number of unsavory practices. In response, a number of developers are participating in a fork of the original Audacity software, cal

(Note: since the writing of the following, the Free Software Foundation has tweeted: “The FSF board unanimously condemns misogyny, racism, and other bigotry as well as defamation, intimidation, and unfair attacks on free thought and speech.” They are rejecting the criticism of Stallman as unfair and, in so doing, they aligned themselves with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. They have put themselves beyond redemption and any fair hearing for their ideas. No-one wants to listen to the logic-chopping of rape apologists – it is as bad as listening to Southern racists excusing slavery.)   This is outside of my usual ambit, and it is about cooperative software development rather than market economics, but it seems to belong here more than anywhere. People who follow free and open source software by now know that alleged harasser and rape apologist Richard M. Stallman has, by a secret process, been restored to the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. Stallman has lon