How We Made MuseScore 4 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qct6LKbneKQ

by maybevain • 3 years ago

80 26 3 years ago

Inviz• 3 years ago

It's a really good video like the others from the author. It's a poignant journey into UX design. And then the Jank Man is a great mascot for all the conflicting descisions we have to take for a large software to take shape.

TRiG_Ireland• 3 years ago

Sibelius crashed.

tczMUFlmoNk• 3 years ago

I love this kind of behind-the-scenes, in-the-weeds video, and it's well done.

Unfortunately, the incident with a Muse Group director openly blackmailing an open source developer [1] [2], threatening to have him deported to China while specifically calling out his public criticism of the CCP with a disgusting "who knows how he may be received"—well, to say that this incident leaves a bitter mark in my memory would be an understatement. I am happy to be using other free software for my engraving and playback needs, and with Tenacity just recently having published its first stable release, I'm eager to drop Audacity, too.

Truth be told, I was never a heavy MuseScore user, but I have used Audacity regularly for decades. This turn saddens me, but it matters to me how those I support use their power, and threatening someone's life over an audio program is bullying more severe than that which I can condone.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27881539

[2] https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issu...

LanternLight83• 3 years ago

Whewf, I had no idea-- thanks for putting this out there. FWIW Tanacrul doesn't seem involved, and I for one grant him the benefit of the doubt regarding the views of his employers; He wouldn't be the first person to have critisisms of "the culture at work". I would appreciate any statements he's made on the matter (or that the company's made since), as it's not cool to support this kind of culture by not speaking out, instigating/participating in change, or seeking alternative employment (each of which may or may not be possible or neccessary, depending on the current situation).

I presume that nothing has come of this for those involved (or GPL'ing the mobile app?), but didn't finish the thread or otherwise dig further.

Gordonjcp• 3 years ago

threatening to have him deported to China while specifically calling out his public criticism of the CCP with a disgusting "who knows how he may be received"

I think you're overstating it a bit.

How about you tell the whole story?

notpushkin• 3 years ago

I think the fact that Daniel backpedaled and said his blackmail comment wasn't meant as blackmail doesn't really change anything.

wizofaus• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what to believe, but the curious thing is even years later the repository in question doesn't seem to have been taken down.

axus• 3 years ago

That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did, he deserved it.

jansan• 3 years ago

The videos are awesome. Is there a Youtube channel that does similar great reviews of graphic software ui/ux?

thecatspaw• 3 years ago

Tantacrul's channel is exactly that, for music software. Thats how he got the job at musescore actually. He made a video critiquing the software, and the devs probably went "hey, that dude is right, how about we hire him?"

jraph• 3 years ago

(2022)

glimshe• 3 years ago

We talk a lot about Blender as being the big success story of Open Source (and it is amazing indeed), but we shouldn't forget smaller projects like Musescore. It's really good software and I've used it a lot; it's as good if not better than many of the commercial alternatives.

Now if we only had a Musescore-quality Photoshop or After Effects alternative...

junon3• 3 years ago

Ah yes, after giving the middle finger to the entire open source community after you bought Audacity - only after screwing over the original userbase of MuseScore.

Tantacrul is a black mark on the FOSS community. Strong words, yes.

leoedin• 3 years ago

Can you elaborate more on this? Obviously they've "acquired" these open source projects - which probably leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many OSS purists - but they're also investing significant money into improving them. At the end of the day there'll be a much better open source app.

djaychela• 3 years ago

Can you put some flesh on those bones? I knew a bit about the audacity data collection problem, but not about the MuseScore userbase...

Hamcha2• 3 years ago

I'm not saying he's an angel but has Tantacrul ever said that FOSS was his focus?

He's a composer and UX designer with a prior job in Microsoft, the fact that the tools he gets to work now are open source seems happenstance more than a deliberate choice. He was critical of existing music notation software and now works on one. He probably enjoys that the open nature of Muse Group lets him be pretty transparent about what he gets done and that's about it.

He mentioned that YouTube and Patreon do not provide him with good enough income, so if he quit Muse he'd just go work somewhere else where he can't talk about his work.

junon3• 3 years ago

It doesn't matter, don't buy a super popular and well established open source project and then stuff it full of spyware.

vouaobrasil• 3 years ago

I disagree with your statement. Audacity had a minor issue of data collection, which was to report user data to law enforcement if necessary. However, that can be disabled by the user still. Audacity is still open source and it still works. Yes, they didn't handle it the best but the attempted to make good of it.

Also, they didn't really screw over the user base of Musescore. Musescore still works great and they are providing an amazing product for free. Even though pure open source might not be their focus, I have a hard time condemning them for providing great, free products.

(I'm not affiliated with Musescore or their company. I'm just a happy user of both Audacity and Musescore, both of which are the only truly competitive free products in their respective domains.)

kzrdude• 3 years ago

MuseScore has been transformed in recent versions. Great strides in quality while simultaneously turning away from being community-owned, that's at least the feeling I get.

Musescore is now hard to install, distributions don't carry builds of it. It's now only distributed as snap, flatpak and appimage. It now integrates with commercial services, etc.

That's just a characterization of what it looks like from the linux front, the application is sliding over to behave like a commercial project.

WhrRTheBaboons• 3 years ago

that was always the vibe I got from Tantacrul’s videos. He does his best not to delve into it but the writing was on the wall from the start.

aayushdutt• 3 years ago

Musescrore 4 is nominated for UX Design Awards, add in your vote if you love the redesign.

https://ux-design-awards.com/winners/2023-2-musescore-4

grotted• 3 years ago

While I love the UX improvements, MuseScore 4 is unusably laggy. On every machine I’ve tried, it takes 10+ seconds to respond after a few phrases have been entered.

I was hoping they just rushed out a buggy release, but there’s been no improvement since then. When folks complain about it on the subreddit or forums, Muse Group just brushes them off.

I’ve used Musescore for a long time, and I happily would’ve put up with moderate bugs for a contemporary UX. But unfortunately, 4.0/4.1 is completely broken for me.

How We Made MuseScore 4 [video]

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