Will MuseScore always remain a free, open source, and full featured music notation program?

• Sep 22, 2019 - 02:38

Sorry, I know this must have been discussed a lot.
Still I find no very clear and simple answer to this question.
Just curious because I want to go deeper into developing skills with MuseScore.
But I don't want to learn it only to find out that down the road it may cost a yearly fee, etc.
I do not need the Pro features at this time.
On this page:
https://musescore.com/upgrade?feature=start-free-trial
I t starts out with these statements:

"
Start Free 30-Day Trial to get more out of Musescore with extra features and benefits
"

and

"
Unlock all PRO member benefits
For learning & sharing
More mixing tools
Set the instrument and volume of each part. Mute, change the dynamic level, or make it play solo.
"
I'm assuming that's referring to perhaps the features on that site, not features inside MuseScore itself.

Sorry, again, what Pro offers may be very useful to some.
And pardon my lack of clear understanding about the differences between
-MuseScore.org program, and
-MuseScore.com offers, benefits, upgrades, Pro, etc.

Again, all I really want to know in this topic is:
Will MuseScore always remain a free, open source, and full featured music notation program?

Thank you.

Comments

• Sep 22, 2019 - 05:04

The statement "Start Free 30-Day Trial to get more out of Musescore with extra features and benefits" is extremely misleading. There are two separate things referred to by the same name: I'll call them "Musescore", the score writing program, and "Mx$x$cxrx", which is some sort of on-line "sharing" website. It is impossible to believe that that this confusion is not deliberate. The two things are tangled together, using the same logo on two websites, musescore.org and musescore.com, and links which take the user unwittingly from one to the other, but always in my experience from .org to .com. I recently downloaded the "appimage"(?) version of Musescore 3, and followed the "feedback" link. There were questions like "How likely are you to recommend Musescore to a friend": a meaningless 1 to 9 rating, but I would reduce my rating by between 4 and 8 because of this problem. I don't feel I could recommend the Musescore software to anyone unless I was sure I had time to explain the Mx$x$cxrx scam to them. Email notifications of forum posts come with a link to a musescore.org address which redirects to a musescore.com address. This is not transparent, and it is not honest.

The answer to your question, at least in principle, is that the free software idea is designed to ensure the freedom of software (not really its costlessness); any attempt by the proprietors of Mx$x$cxrx to "take away the free version" could be countered by making a fork of the current version. The licensing is set up to ensure this.

Meanwhile a stream of questioners appear on this forum, at least some of whom have almost certainly been tricked into paying money for what they thought was a "Pro" version of Musescore. And the resident "answer any question" brigade attempt to assert that this is all perfectly normal. I sometimes wonder why.

Reply

• Sep 22, 2019 - 05:27

"
The answer to your question, at least in principle, is that the free software idea is designed to ensure the freedom of software (not really its costlessness); any attempt by the proprietors of Mx$x$cxrx to "take away the free version" could be countered by making a fork of the current version. The licensing is set up to ensure this.
"

Yes, now that does indeed assure me that the MuseScore Music Notation Program will always be free,
open source, and fully featured.

Thank you.

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