On the other hand, isn't it nice to have a funding model that allows developers of open source software to be sustainably salaried?
I think any reasonable person would find this unethical mafia-like behaviour.
Essentially it boils down to this: if you see value to society in allowing people to share musical scores with each other, that's fundamentally at odds with a libre software philosophy. Because if you let people share music on a platform, they will inevitably share copyrighted melodies, which means not only that you are forced to monetize to be able to strike licensing arrangements, or else be sued into oblivion. And you are also required to enforce that the sharing software be used as intended in order to placate rightsholders, or else be sued into oblivion. And it's that "as intended" that is fundamentally different from how many of us think about FOSS.
There's a lot of corporate speak in the official post here related to the emplacement of score downloads behind the paywall in the first place https://musescore.com/groups/improving-musescore-com/discuss... but it's the same sentiment: if MuseScore.com doesn't put in place paywalls for downloads and enforce them, they will lose their ability to negotiate with major music publishers, and they see that outcome being a net loss to society of access to digital scores.
Frankly, I think this is a reasonable tradeoff. MuseScore sees monetization and adherence to these restrictions as a necessary step to ensure they have the resources and community to promote music literacy. That's a distinct mission from, say, GNU's mission, and just as valid. And of all the corporations using GPL for visions distinct from GNU's vision (here's looking at you, AWS), this one at least has a reason beyond being a naked cash grab.
The discussion stops being nuanced as soon as the company starts the discussion with a threat such as "will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content".
At the point the email in the Github issue was written the API was public. It was removed after the repository owner responded, as can be seen on the Internet Archive.
Nothing ever justifies offering a public API and getting people to use it, to only later backtrack, accuse users of "stealing" and threaten developers with use of physical force.
If the problem is caused by major industries, then just remove the previously public API and don't send mafia-like threats.
Threatening someone with words like "Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content" is extremely serious and shouldn't be casually dismissed.
This is not "badly worded". This is either a lie, or MuseScore is dealing with institutions that behave like the Mafia. There is no excuse for either of those behaviours.
Also, you seem to be implying that the company had the opportunity to work together and alert the repo owner, but instead they decided to double down on the threats and accusations. This is also completely unacceptable.
>If MuseScore was not acquired and continued down the current path, it would have been already shut down by now. This is what many people do not understand. MuseScore was going to be shut down if it was not acquired and a plan put in place with rights holders.
>Any site or system of distribution that includes copyrighted works and is done so under agreement with rights holders and according to their conditions will be shut down. This is simply reality.
The "excuse" for those behaviors is that they got to stay in business. I don't agree with all the actions of the rights holders but that's the way it is. If you feel it's better for there to be no Musescore at all, I would advise you to just not use the website. There's lots of other free sites that will host Creative Commons-licensed media. If you're looking for someone to negotiate hard against the rights holders, you would have better luck trying with a bigger company like Apple or Spotify.
There is also no excuse for sending threats of use of physical force by CCP instead of sending a proper DMCA.
Even if musescore-downloader was doing illegal things (and I would argue it wasn't, since there was no circumvention of anything), the law should be followed by both sides, no excuses. That means sending a DMCA instead of a threat.
Two, the DMCA seems to not apply here, if this is a Chinese citizen enforcing legal rulings against another Chinese citizen. That is a perfectly valid situation to call the police, in any country. The message getting relayed through a third party (Musescore) doesn't really change it.
Three, this argument is going around in circles, I think a great option would be to contribute to the author's musescore alternative: https://github.com/LibreScore/LibreScore
The DMCA absolutely applies here, since the whole request was for the repository on Github to be removed, and Github is an American website that follows American law and receives DMCA requests.
There's also no indication that Xmader is a Chinese citizen. The Anti-CPP message on his profile could also mean he's from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or anywhere in the world. The person making the threat seems to be Russian and MuseScore seems to be registered in Belgium.
Even if China could be involved, if MuseScore prefers to solve this using physical force (their words) rather than a simple DMCA, that paints them in an even worse picture than anyone ever in the history of open source.
This was a mafia-like threat, plain and simple. There's absolutely no justification for it, even if it's possible to happen.
Also, considering the owner of the repository considers the Chinese state a dictatorship, it's pretty fair to assume "calling the Chinese police on him" doesn't mean anywhere near the same as it means calling the police in Europe or America. This is clearly the worst kind of threat you can make to this developer.
You seem to be giving all the possible benefit of the doubt to the company while giving less than none to the repository owner, even when they provided information about how what they're doing is not breaking the law, and provided a proper way to solve the issue, DMCA. At the same time, the company hasn't provided much.
I don't see why anyone should assume that the company knows anything more than that but is still resorting to threats instead of solving this the easy way.
The accusations don't have a leg to stand on, otherwise a simple DMCA would have solved the issue, period.
EDIT: Also, I don't see how this conversation can continue. If you don't see a problem with calling the CCP police on someone whose only personal information we know is that he's anti-CCP, then I don't think we have enough ethical common ground to even continue this discussion.
However I would still encourage open source authors to be educated on Chinese law and to avoid telling Chinese citizens to do things that could potentially get them arrested in China. If there is a real legal threat there it's irresponsible to ignore it. So in the end it's probably good that it was posted on Github.
Edit to respond to your edit: That's not my view. The issue is that the police have already been called by a different party. (or the equivalent of it, i.e. the company is contractually obligated to contact the government in the event of a violation, under threat of legal action from that government) The email appears to just be informing them of that fact. In my view, that is the only responsible thing to do. The only other option is to just not inform them, and have the police show up anyway.
If this is a real threat then MuseScore really handled it the worst way possible and they should be ashamed for purposefully threatening to endanger a CCP citizen. If it's not, it's just a mafia-style shakedown.
Once again: if you don't see a problem with calling the CCP police on someone whose only personal information we know is that he's anti-CCP, then I don't think we have enough ethical common ground to even continue this discussion.
Edit: I agree with you that if this musescore developer is lying about that, then that would be wrong of them. But I don't think I have enough information to make that judgement. So I think that's where we're disconnected. At least for open source projects, my view is to take any and all potential legal threats seriously until the matter is resolved with the lawyers.
I sell software to the Chinese government to track down dissidents and kill them with drones. I release a lot of code under a GPL license and use the funds to promote OSS software. Most people wouldn't consider this a positive for the world even though more GPL software is created. Or in other words many people do not believe that "the ends justify the means" is a valid reason for something.
They are distinct, stopping the latter would not stop the former, as such they are not linked.
Let me try saying this another way. Tell your story again but where the decision to be involved in open source software was not made. Was the sum total of badness injected into this world quantifiably less?