Introducing OpenScore
It’s an exciting time for MuseScore at the moment, with massive changes underway both in the code and on the website, helping to ensure that musicians have the tools they need to create and share amazing content! However, there is one more thing that every budding composer needs: inspiration!
It is my great privilege to announce OpenScore, the successor project to Open Goldberg and Open Well Tempered Clavier. The goal with those projects was to liberate specific works by Bach. The goal with OpenScore is much more ambitious; we want to liberate all public domain music!
The aim is to digitise and liberate the works of Mozart, Beethoven and other famous classical composers by making their scores freely available in MuseScore’s MSCZ format. This enables convenient sharing, adaptation and playback across a range of devices, including computers, phones and tablets. The scores will also be available in various other formats, including PDF, MIDI and MusicXML, as well as accessible formats like Braille and Modified Stave Notation for blind and partially sighted musicians.
Best of all, the scores will be released under a Creative Commons license, meaning there are no copyright restrictions, so everyone will be free to use them for any purpose! This will be of huge benefit to orchestras, choirs and individuals looking for materials from which to practise music. It will also facilitate a number of uses in research, academia, and education, and help to inspire composers and arrangers in producing new content.
To make it happen, MuseScore is joining forces with IMSLP and a number of partners across the music and tech industries. However, for OpenScore to be a success we also need the help of the community. MuseScore and IMSLP represent the two largest online communities actively creating and sharing sheet music. We want to harness this potential to create the largest, and most accurate, digital collection of public domain scores available anywhere. We need your help to make this happen.
In the coming months we will be running a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to fund the liberation effort. We will be very grateful if those of you who are able to could donate to the crowdfunding campaign, and help spread the word among friends and family, and via social media, etc. Once the campaign is live, it’s very important that we get the word out as quickly as possible to build momentum. (The campaign isn’t live at the moment, so don’t start sharing just yet!)
There are other ways you can get involved too, such as by helping to produce the transcriptions of public domain works in MuseScore format. There will even be rewards available, in the form of PRO accounts on MuseScore.com, for users who complete transcriptions that make it into the OpenScore collection. If you’ve always fancied having a PRO account, but didn’t have the money to buy one, then now you will have the chance to earn one!
Finally, we’re looking for talented people within the community to come forward to help us ensure that OpenScore has the greatest possible impact. If you have some experience with online marketing, communication or graphic design and are willing to help out then please get in touch via my contact form.
P.S. Look out for us at FOSDEM 2017 where we will be announcing OpenScore to the world!
Read on OpenScore blog: https://www.openscore.cc/blog/introducing-openscore
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Comments
I'm very happy to know this good news about launching open score project. I myself is a blind musician, and need lots of classical music to read in braille. I'm also launching an Open Braille Music project, and it does with both public domain and non-pd works, because they are in BRAILLE. I'm very interested in the musescore project, because I always spend lots of money to engage Sibelius engraving for my project. I transcribe braille music in a very fast speed, perhaps 3-4 days for a 100-page orchestral work. If your project can have many works engraved, e.g., symphonies by Beethoven, Schumann, Mahler, Rachmaninoff etc, and other piano and chamber music too, I will be very happy to read them. If you need me to make braille transcription, I'll be very happy to attend this project. I can use transcription tool like Braillemuse very skillful than any sighted people.
Thank you in advance for making such a great project, and sincerely look forward to its launch!
Regards
Haipeng
In reply to I'm very happy to know this by hhpmusic
I'm glad to hear you are interested, and thanks for the offer of help! At the moment we are looking at ways of converting the MuseScore files into Braille rather than having to type them up in Braille separately. We would certainly appreciate it if some Braille readers would check the Braille scores and provide feedback. I'll let you know when we have some sample Braille scores ready.
In reply to I'm glad to hear you are by shoogle
Dear Shoogle,
How can you convert Musescore files into braille? As I know, the current softwares, Goodfeel, Braillemuse, BME etc, all have lots of limitations, and I'm thinking about a new xml to braille software BrailleOrch. Since I'm not a programmer, I wrote a very comprehensive framework and hosted it on Github last February, waiting for people to help me. If you can manage Musescore to output braille, or produce an alternative way, I'll be very happy to help you instead of making another software which will not know when to come out. I ever read the braille file of the Open Goldberg, and found there are lots of things missing, mainly ornaments. The braille score must contain detailed music information and braief pagination information as much as possible. Anyway, I'll be happy to test any of such accessible fields, including Musescore's navigation.
Regards
Haipeng
In reply to Dear Shoogle, How can you by hhpmusic
Hi hhpmusic, thank you for stepping up and offering your help and expertise. We will definitely need this. We are strongly considering to use the open source MusicXML to Braille translator available in the Music21 toolkit. We have set it as a requirement to use open source software for this task, so that rules out any of the proprietary solutions, which may be excellent but do not benefit the goal of this project.
Music21 is software writting in Python and available on Github at https://github.com/cuthbertLab/music21 The Braille translator in particular can be found in music21/braille. To discuss about Music21, please join this Google Group and feel free to refer to this post.
In reply to Hi hhpmusic, thank you for by Thomas
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for your comments. In fact:
1. I know Music21, but the braille side is quite limited. First, its functionality is basic; and second, it's not a GUI program, and I'm not a pythonist. This is also not a flexible software, providing the things like unicode braille to readable ASCII conversion, and no braille formatting options are provided in my opinion. Different country has its unique braille format, at least the one used in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland is different from the other used in UK, US, Japan, Korea and China. Piano score is not the same format as chamber and orchestral scores. So there must be a very comprehensive option page, which must be done in GUI instead of command line which will block common users away.
2. My own project is completely open source, but I'm not a programmer, so I asked an American to host it on Github. He's a braille transcriber and Pythonist, but not so advanced for such a complicated tool, at least it's not feasible for just one people to do it. If there are anyone interested in it, and can write it using any kind of language, not limited to Python, I'll be very happy to work with him. The project address is at:
https://github.com/barichd/brailleorch
And you can find the comprehensive Borframework text there.
Regards
Haipeng
In reply to Dear Thomas, Thank you for by hhpmusic
Hi Haipeng, thank you for putting our attention to your project. We'll check it out.
In reply to Dear Thomas, Thank you for by hhpmusic
While music21 might be limited in the Braille support right now, it does have the advantage of being an actively developed project with an increasing user base. So improvements are definitely possible. And once the support is there, tools can be written with music21 to provide GUI or other user interfaces to allow the ordinary non-programming user to take advantage of
So anyhow, I would not rule out music21. I suspect it probably will turn out to be the best solution long term. But I'm certainly interested in continuing to learn here.
In reply to While music21 might be by Marc Sabatella
So there are two probable ways:
1. Develop a tool working with Musescore and output braille from it; or make Music21 more sophisticated.
2. to help me on my BrailleOrch project. Recently, a professor of a province in China contacted me, trying to clarify what I am doing. He's also developing a tool like BrailleMuse, and I'd like to make an independent tool offline instead of online. His work is under the sponsorship of Chinese association for the blind, and he will meet me this February when he returns to China. We'll talking about our next steps, and I hope we can get the support from government. Therefore we can develop BrailleOrch without any problem. It will remain free, because I said any previous commercial softwares are dead or stopping due to the contrast of low-amount of customer and high development cost. If our software can come out, we can not only work with musescore, but also standard music publishers who use Sibelius and Finale. Then we can produce any kinds of braille music scores as long as there are source files for the music. I designed a perfect copyright protecting strategy, so music by living composers can also be transcribed into braille without any problem, and braille music is out of copyright law.
Haipeng
In reply to So there are two probable by hhpmusic
The music21 lead developer assured us that it produces satisfactory output for everything except piano scores (which many converts struggle with due to the complexity of piano music and the lack of a standardised Braille representation). Having said that, he did warn us that music21's Braille output is more verbose than that produced by a human Braillist, because it doesn't yet support all of the special abbreviations and repeat markings used in Braille. Nevertheless, the Braille is semantically correct.
The goal of OpenScore is not to provide perfect Braille, but to provide some form of Braille score where previously nothing was available. Hopefully this will increase interest and demand for Braille music, and drive development of Braille conversion tools.
I'm also a blind musician (lost vision in 2012) but I'm using the ABC-Notation for reading scores. It would be grateful if you could offer them as well. Otherwise I have to convert the MSCZ-Files over MusicXML with EasyABC to ABC manually. Or just add a possibility for users to add ABC-Files to the existing scores as well because after converting MusicXML-Files to ABC you have to edit them with a source code editor (e.g. with Notepad++) too, to make them better readable. By the way I'm going to give a talk about the ABC-Notation on the SightCity-forum 2017 on May 2017 in Frankfurt/Main.
In reply to I'm also a blind musician by Dr. Sooom
Thanks for your comment. We don't currently have plans to offer ABC files, but this is something we might consider doing if there is sufficient interest and it is feasible. I would be very grateful if you would send me a link to your presentation slides, video, or other materials, so I can learn more about ABC notation and understand the use cases.
Just so you know, the OpenScore scores will be hosted on MuseScore.com, so you will have all the usual options and formats available for downloading, including MusicXML, so you would only need to do one conversion yourself (MusicXML to ABC) rather than two (MSCZ to MusicXML, and then MusicXML to ABC).
In reply to Thanks for your comment. We by shoogle
@shoogle: http://drsooom.at/abc/ and http://abcnotation.com/wiki/abc:standard:v2.1
In reply to I'm also a blind musician by Dr. Sooom
In fact, if you can use Lilypond, you can convert musicxml into Lilypond. As I know, EasyABC has limitations on musicxml conversion, so you just use musicxml2ly to get better output. By the way, if we improve the accessibility of Musescore itself, you can use NVDA to read score in it without exporting any formats, unless you can read braille and have a braille device.
This is really interesting! I can't support on monetary means, but I think I might be able to hand out some scores!
As soon as the OpenScore project kicks in, I'm surely going to provide some high quality scores transcriptions regarding piano music. How can I know when, where and how I can begin contributing?
By now, I give you three advices:
the internet community is multilingual, so in some way the title of each score should be available in many languages, or many search engines could possibly ignore OpenScore making it virtually unavailable/unknown in some Countries;
contributors should have an easy and reliable way to see if the score they want to spend their time on is or is not already available in OpenScore archives; such a service should work in spite of the language used to type the title and in spite of minimal differences in spelling;
a service could be provided to inform about the public domain/copyrighted status of a specific author/composition according to the law system of each Country, so that contributors can know in advance if typing a specific composition is or is not worth doing and if by publishing it they risk or don't risk to be sued.
All this may sound pedantic, but I think it is not (particularly #3).
Which Creative Commons licence? They have several unfree ones, and even for the free ones, stating there to be “no copyright restrictions” is plain wrong…
In reply to Which Creative Commons by mirabilos
Hi mirabilos, the answer is: cc-by or Creative Commons Attribution. With an attribution to the MuseScore community.
In reply to Hi mirabilos, the answer is: by Thomas
As far as the details of the engraving, what is the goal to shoot for?
Similar to an ur-text? If so, should typos or other mistakes be corrected?
Or, is it user-friendliness, with modern engraving practices?
Or are some other criteria to be used?
In reply to As far as the details of the by marty strasinger
Good question.
Saw the project idea today the first time.
I can imagine to support a kickstarter campaign (please offer paypal support). But I can also imagine to contribute the project with some transcriptions. But without having a pro account, which would be a good place to upload them? And where would be an overview (without the search tool of musescore.com) which transcriptions are already available an which one are needed (categories like componists, time era and so on)?
Unfortunately I have'nt time to participate to FOSDEM.
I would like to be a transcriber. Do I just submit? How many of my transcriptions have to make it in order for me to have a pro account? Is it judged by accuracy, does it have to look like the original score should we be in possession of it? Are we allowed to "Modernize" the score looks a little bit?
I would love to contribute! I already have a nice Mozart Symphony 40 full transcription at musescore.com: https://musescore.com/user/126642/sets/1898111 that I'd like to be a part of this project.
How about working with cpdl.org? There is already a lot of (good) stuff there. For me it is more useful than IMSLP
In reply to How about working with by Jwagner
CPDL’s preferred (and self-named) licence is not nice. It’s a bad copyediting from the GNU GPLv2, and it’s not been formally reviewed and accepted by the relevant bodies (OSI, OKFN, Free Cultural Works, etc). Furthermore, the FSF may have a copyright in the text of the GPL itself and does not allow alterations.
So, in short, any new project should avoid that and make a list of acceptable licences comprising of CC-BY-SA (if copyleft is desired), CC-BY and one of the more permissive ones such as MirOS, because CC-BY can also be read as weak copyleft, and the CC licences have long legal texts and difficult implications (even CC themselves say so) often ignored.
Full disclosure: I authored the MirOS Licence… but for this exact purpose: something close to the MIT licence (current gold-standard permissive software licence), with a disclaimer that works slightly better for EU citizens (but not really worse for others), and (important here) targetting any work under copyright protection, not just software, or just music, or just texts, or just whatever. (Back then, nobody considered neighbouring rights; I’d extend explicitly if I’d do it again, but for now, implicit must suffice.)
I am more curious about MuseScore 3, after trying out Dorico for a month.
Having spent hundreds of hours on an edition of Bach transcriptions by Gustav Leonhardt. With MuseScore almost everything is possible but really many things go wrong without manually tweaking! Collisions, slurs, ties, staff spacing, beam angles (!) etc.
So many hours, when a Programme does it al right, the cost is earned back quite soon.
At the other hand, of course when a musician just needs a workable score/part, MuseScore is perfect. Easy to use and you can tweak almost vereything!
yes, Musescore is free but powerful. The only disadvantage is the musicxml output which makes line break frustrating on Windows notepad, and causes problem when translating braille using Braillemuse, generating missing bar numbers (braille needs bar numbers no matter they are available in print). Still, many more special symbols should be added in Musicxml output, especially those in SMUFL font like Bruvra, which are added in the coming Musicxml 3.1. I hope the new Musescore 3.0 can be much more accessible, and the musicxml output can contain symbols as much as in Musicxml DTD or XSD list.
Regards
Haipeng
In reply to yes, Musescore is free but by hhpmusic
In the current version of MuseScore, you can turn off the option to include line breaks when exporting to MusicXML in Preferences > Export.
In reply to In the current version of by Isaac Weiss
Thank you for the hint. In fact, I mean that the line break is a bit different. It exports an xml file with Unix like line break, not Windows. Therefore, Notepad will not recognize such breaks, and spread all in one line until 1024 bytes, then a wrap to the next long line of 1024 etc. Musicxml from Finale, Sibelius, Encore etc all gives correct line breaks, thus a ctrl-m and a ctrl-j, so-called crlf pair.
In reply to Thank you for the hint. In by hhpmusic
Just don't use notepad. Get yourself a decent editor, e.g. notepad++
In reply to Just don't use notepad. Get by Jojo-Schmitz
Thank you. I just tried NPP, and when I press ctrl-end to go to the end of the file, npp hangs up and crashes. This will not cause any problem in common notepad.
In reply to Thank you. I just tried NPP, by hhpmusic
You should probably report that to the Notepad++ folks.
And if you can't live without Ctrl+End, try another editor in the meantime
In reply to You should probably report by Jojo-Schmitz
Notepad++ is really "the" standard, crashing it by using ctrl-end is highly unlikely.
Try it again
In reply to Thank you for the hint. In by hhpmusic
FWIW, I've noticed this about Notepad as well, but Wordpad works fine.
Peter, will the presentation be recorded?
In reply to Peter, will the presentation by Isaac Weiss
The talk at fosdem will indeed be recorded.
In reply to The talk at fosdem will by Thomas
Excellent!
Wow, this project is great! I think it's a really good idea, and I am interested in helping transcribe music, at which I have fair experience. Does anyone have any (public domain) music that they'd like me to do?
This is great news! I look forward to participating and contributing as I can, and eventually taking advantage of the results!
One other thought I had: it could be worth contacting some living composers (or representatives of recently-deceased ones) about contributing some of their works to this project. I suspect there are some who would be open to this idea if presented right. For instance, if we focus exclusively on PD works, that essentially means, very little 20th century classical music or jazz, no rock, etc. Would be nice if we could include Schoenberg, Ellington, even the Beatles, etc. I have a few tentative contacts in this area I have long had in the back of my mind.
In reply to This is great news! I look by Marc Sabatella
Hi Marc,
Thanks for the suggestion. If you have any luck persuading a contemporary composer to release their work under a Creative Commons license then please let me know!
In reply to This is great news! I look by Marc Sabatella
For example, a lot of Frederic Rzewski's works are released with a CC license and they could be a nice addition to the 20th Century Repertoire!
Complete presentation from FOSDEM yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDw-adxtaqE
In reply to Complete presentation from by Isaac Weiss
Thanks for sharing. Did you discuss on FOSDEM, when it's realistic that the kickerstarter campaign will start and which preparations are necessary before this?
In reply to Thanks for sharing. Did you by kuwitt
I actually wasn't there in person, but plans are to launch the Kickstarter around April.
In reply to I actually wasn't there in by Isaac Weiss
Thanks, and still remember, please support above a credit card support other possibilities.
First of all, congratulations on making the move to start such an ambitious project, I am looking forward to contributing as much as possible in the future. Following the question I asked about MEI at FOSDEM, I would like to know if there has been any discussion on somehow including MEI (www.music-encoding.org) in musescore. Apparently it was an issue some time ago in the forums (https://musescore.org/en/node/24208) but I would dare to say that in the light of the OpenScore project further work in that direction might be beneficial for the music encoding community and assist in getting everyone on board.
In reply to First of all, congratulations by noctuabundus
Hi noctuabundus, thank you for sharing your interest in OpenScore. As you may have read, I've been in personal contact with the MEI community since 2010, meeting them in Detmold (Germany) several years in a row. Only a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by the MEI community to talk about MEI export in MuseScore. As it goes in open source world, it takes a developer who likes to scratch his own itch to make it happen. Maybe the OpenScore project may cause some itching.
In reply to First of all, congratulations by noctuabundus
Wouldn’t a generic MusicXML ↔ MEI converter help a lot more people?
Maybe developers from other MusicXML- or MEI-capable music notation software would even jump in and help.
In reply to Wouldn’t a generic MusicXML ↔ by mirabilos
There's already such converter somewhere. But I think a better integration with MuseScore would be nicer, for instance, providing the basic MEI fields (MEI Header at least) in the properties dialogue. I hope I'll have some time soon to give my contribution to this.
I will gladly contribute to this. I'm already sitting on... 7, I think, Rachmaninov pieces; 5 of them currently never put on the site. Plus the 5 I already have. And the several I have currently in-progress. Plus, with the new Musescore version with proper ossias, I should be able to put some Godowsky up as well.
If I had some sheet music to work from I would really want to help transcribe music. I've always wanted a PRO Account. What would be the best way to find sheets?
In reply to If I had some sheet music to by nutella511
This guy had a request: https://musescore.org/en/node/169401 As with the link he posted, in general, http://imslp.org/ is the place to go.
In reply to This guy had a request: by Isaac Weiss
Thanks. I just ended up there. I found a sheet for all of Beethoven's Symphony 9 Op. 125. Would transcribing that be enough to get a pro account, it is 228 pages and 1:05:38
In reply to Thanks. I just ended up by nutella511
Specific details are still TBA, but I'm virtually certain that would exceed any requirements. However, perhaps not that particular score, since it's already been done: https://musescore.com/user/158781/sets/1821556
In reply to Specific details are still by Isaac Weiss
What are some of the ones that haven't been done? I'm open to transcribing anything to get a pro account.
In reply to What are some of the ones by nutella511
I would encourage you to hold your horses, as this isn't going to begin until April, but if you want to get a head start, simply pick something that you can't find on MuseScore.com. Beethoven's symphonies are all covered, but I see very few Haydn symphonies, for example. (Also, those are shorter and more manageable.)
In reply to Thanks. I just ended up by nutella511
Yes, I visited the set, and found the single movements are all devided into small parts, and so does his transcription of 1812 overture. For the project, I'd like to have a whole movement in one file, which will ease reading and braille transcription. The divided parts will generate uncontinuous measure numbers in braille (braille needs measure numbering in piano and ensemble scores), and it's a frustration to deal with such scores. Can Musescore merge portions of score like Finale and Sibelius?
Haipeng
In reply to Yes, I visited the set, and by hhpmusic
Yes, it can, provided they all have the same set of instruments: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/album
In reply to Yes, it can, provided they by Isaac Weiss
hhpmusic might wish to be aware of the fact that this adds section breaks, which by default reset measure numbering, but can be made to not do that (right-click, Properties).
If this is an inherent problem with Braille music, the converter should maybe be fixed to just ignore measure numbers and renumber them all by its own.
In reply to hhpmusic might wish to be by mirabilos
That will be an option in 2.1: #105716: Option to always have album add PageBreaks in addition SectionBreaks before each movement
Interesting!
Always willing to transcribe some classical guitar scores from the open doamin in MuseScore format.
If you want me to do that, tell me which scores you would like to see transcribed...
In reply to Interesting! Always willing by swastassijns
There is a link to the contact form in the original post.
In reply to There is a link to the by mike320
Yes,
the only problem with the contact form is that there is supposed to be a CAPTCHA question...only there is no question, so the answer is always wrong. That's why I couldn't use the form...
In reply to Yes, the only problem with by swastassijns
Interesting, I just tested it. All I had to do was click the box next to "I am not a robot" and it went through.
In reply to Interesting, I just tested by mike320
This is the link to the contact form ... I don't see the text 'I am not a robot' ...
contact form
In reply to This is the link to the by swastassijns
Did you mean this link? https://musescore.com/shoogle/contact
In reply to Did you mean this link? by mike320
Yes... that is the form
In reply to Did you mean this link? by mike320
shoogle answered ignore this
In reply to This is the link to the by swastassijns
Please sign-up here: https://musescore.org/openscore-transcribe
The CAPTCHA you see on the personal contact forms depends on a number of factors, such as whether you are signed in, have cookies enables, are in incognito mode (private browsing). If you look like a human then you just have to tick a box, but if your set-up makes you look suspicious then you are given a more difficult challenge to prove you are human.
Strange, here is the link to the contact form ... don't see the 'I am not a robot' text...
[[https://musescore.com/shoogle/contact]]
In reply to Strange, here is the link to by swastassijns
The sign-up link is: https://musescore.org/openscore-transcribe
The CAPTCHA could be hidden by a browser extension or if you have JavaScript disabled. If you have any further problems sending messages via user contact pages then please let us know at support@musescore.com.
I wanted to make a correction to the OP about the section regarding the CC licenses. I work on IMSLP as a Copyright reviewer on the site and I can tell you right now no typesets are copyright free, they are ALL under copyright! All re-engraved files are under copyright protection, depending on which copyright region your talking about. He is incorrect in saying that CC licenses are waived of all copyright restrictions (Copyright-free or public domain). This is not true. The original engraving of the piece is public domain (if we are talking about the original engraving that was done, depending on the region in Canada: life + 50, the USA: this is a bit tricky but generally it is 95 years from publication and in Europe, life + 70). I think people are not aware of all a CC license does is GIVE permission from the engraver to release the file on the site, online or where-ever. The copyright restrictions are still in place for the score legally speaking. Depending on which license you choose, their are still restrictions to them: non-commercial, share-alike etc.. I don't want to write about each specifics for each license (I can link to each legal text if need be).
Anyway that was the only section I saw that was incorrectly stated. Good luck on the project, we at IMSLP are looking forward to more scores uploaded to the site!
In reply to I wanted to make a correction by Sallen112
The typeset scores on IMSLP are indeed all under copyright, however the PDF scans of public domain scores are not. OpenScore will take the PDF scans and create new typeset scores from them. These new typeset scores will be under copyright, but we will release them under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY). The CC-BY license has no copyright restrictions whatsoever, but it has one condition: attribution. In other words, anyone will by able to use any OpenScore file for any purpose, without having to ask for special permission, as long as they credit that they got the file from OpenScore and provide a link to the original.
In reply to The typeset scores on IMSLP by shoogle
You mean CC0, of course.
(Hint: CC0 §3 is “non sublicensable”, §2 does not apply for some contributors, so you cannot just publish under “only” CC-BY.)
In reply to The typeset scores on IMSLP by shoogle
Yes thats correct that PD scores are not necessarily PD (if it was a score within the last 100 year).
No CC-BY has NOT waived any copyright restriction, they are still in place by the new engraving now. Once again I will state that CC licenses are only permissible licenses, they are not free of copyright protection at all.
The section about "Considerations for the Public" on the Creative common.org here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode#s2b
Is that licenses GRANT only permission from the licencor can grant, copyright has NOT been waived.
Also Section 1a states that for Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor.
The Copyright rights are still held by the owner/licensor.
To give an example of a score that is totally PD in our three server regions on IMSLP, if a new engraving is done through a computer notation program (lets say Musescore), it is thrusted back into copyright protection, because the engraver is the editor of the work, which constitutes as being a significant "contribution" under copyright law.
In reply to Yes thats correct that PD by Sallen112
@Sallen112, @mirabilos, you are both correct in your own way, and I am also correct in my way ;)
@mirabilos, I really do mean CC-BY and not CC0. It is true that we have asked transcribers to submit their transcribed pages under CC0, but when we join them together and make corrections we do so under CC-BY. The only difference between CC0 and CC-BY is that a person using the score has to say where they got it from if it was licensed under CC-BY, whereas they don't have to under CC0. This is simply so that someone re-publishing an OpenScore edition just has to credit OpenScore and link to the score page, rather than having to credit hundreds of transcribers individually. (However, transcribers will be credited individually on the score page.)
@Sallen112, you are correct that CC-BY does not waive copyright (and I have never claimed that it did). However, it does give you the right to do absolutely anything with the score, as long as you say where you got it from. In this sense it has no restrictions, and only one condition (namely attribution).
In reply to @Sallen112, @mirabilos, you by shoogle
> @mirabilos, I really do mean CC-BY and not CC0. […]
OK, I understand. (There’s still the problem that those aren’t sublicenseable, but I agree with CC-BY personally (even if I prefer others), so…)
> @Sallen112, you are correct that CC-BY does not waive copyright (and I have never claimed that it did). However, it does give you the right to do absolutely anything with the score, as long as you say where you got it from.
This is wrong though, CC-BY is not sublicenseable, so recipients cannot put their own licence on their derivatives of those scores even if that licence would fulfil all requirements (here: retaining attribution) otherwise. CC licences all aren’t. They say that that is by design.
If you receive an agreement from all OpenScore contributors to permit sublicencing (in addition to placing the contributions under CC0), I think you can postpone this issue though and revisit it later, as it’s not that pressing “right now” (although getting those permits afterwards could be tricky/annoying/time-intensive, so I’d do that right from the start, which would also put 100% legal clarity on your releasing of the finished scores under CC-BY instead of CC0).
In reply to > @mirabilos, I really do by mirabilos
> CC-BY is not sublicensable
This is true, and it must be true otherwise you could change the license and there would no longer be the requirement to attribute.
> so recipients cannot put their own license on their derivatives of those scores
This is not true. Creating a derivative work implies that some bits of the work have changed, while other bits have not. The recipient is free to place the bits that have changed under any license of their choosing as long as the bits that have not changed are still under CC-BY. A later recipient of the combined work would then have to comply with the terms of both licenses (unless they are able to separate the sections covered under each license, in which case they only need to comply with the terms covering that section).
Imagine you take the OpenScore edition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony and write a new ending for it. You are free to distribute your new ending under any terms of your choosing, only the bit that you borrowed from OpenScore have to be under CC-BY.
This is explained in more detail here: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/4.0/Treatment_of_adaptations
In reply to > CC-BY is not by shoogle
Have you considered using CC BY-NC on the files? This way the files youu can't make money off of them? If you did this, then it would avoid any copyright royality issues with the files if say they choose a scan from something in the early 20th century. Or from a Urtext edition of a 18th/19th century composer, etc.
In reply to Have you considered using CC by Sallen112
We don't want to prevent people from making money from the OpenScore files, and in any case, choosing CC-BY-NC would not prevent copyright royalty issues arising from transcribing copyrighted music (not unless the scan was itself under a non-commercial license). However, we will only accept transcriptions of public domain scores, so there will be no issues with copyright or royalties.
In reply to Have you considered using CC by Sallen112
shoogle wrote:
>> CC-BY is not sublicensable
> This is true, and it must be true otherwise you could change the license and there would no longer be the requirement to attribute.
That’s wrong; most copyfree licences (and I’d wager some “weak copyleft” licences, and even some “strong copyleft” licences under very controlled circumstances) allow sublicencing but only as long as their requirements (in this case, requiring attribution to be retained) are also fulfilled by the new licence. That’s completely normal.
[…]
> Imagine you take the OpenScore edition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony and write a new ending for it. You are free to distribute your new ending under any terms of your choosing, only the bit that you borrowed from OpenScore have to be under CC-BY.
Yes, of course. But that means you publish OpenScore under “CC-BY and CC0”, not “CC-BY”. (This is not dual-licencing, “and” here means both licences apply, not that the user can choose one.)
Sallen112 wrote:
> Have you considered using CC BY-NC on the files?
Ugh, no! That would be nōn-free.
Creative Commons are not a good institution. They could have taken the chance to split their licence suite (which, per se, is good) into “Creative Commons” for the Free ones and “Restricted Commons” for the nōn-free ones for 4.0, but didn’t, unfortunately. This leads many people, even those normally aligned with OSS, to think CC licences are good in general, which they aren’t. It’s important which ones to pick.
> This way the files youu can't make money off of them?
That’s not the end of it.
The -NC variants can only be used by private individuals, so you can’t even use them to teach music in Kindergarten. (There’s an actual court ruling here which says so, although it’s said to have been defanged a bit later on.)
In reply to shoogle wrote: >> CC-BY is by mirabilos
@mirabilos, the point is that people who take OpenScore files, modify them, and release their modifications under any license of their choosing. That is what matters.
You might be able to come up with a special scenario where some technical aspect of the license may potentially be violated, but ultimately it is up to the copyright holder to decide whether to enforce it. We will not hinder any usage of OpenScore works that we feel to be consistent with the spirit of CC-BY. People can do anything they want with the OpenScore works, as long as they credit OpenScore and provide a link to the original.
You might think that it is of utmost importance to ensure that the license is obeyed down to smallest legal detail, but actually this is something that people rarely care much about in the open source world. Take the GPL for example, the Free Software Foundation publishes a list of licenses which they consider to be compatible with the GPL. For a license to be compatible with the GPL it is not allowed to impose any additional restriction on top of the restrictions already in the GPL, yet CC-BY is on that list, even though it does have an additional restriction (i.e. the requirement to attribute). So why is it on the list? The reason is that the FSF have decided that the requirement to attribute is not an important restriction. They are prepared to overlook the the fact that the terms of the two licenses are technically incompatible, because they consider CC-BY to be consistent with the spirit of the GPL. It is of more value to the open source community to take a lax view to the licenses (which are all free licenses after all!) and allow code to be shared that it would be to insist on a strict definition and thereby make huge amounts of code incompatible, simply due to the license. (In fact, if they used a strict interpretation of the GLP then there would be almost no compatible licenses, since virtually all licenses impose some restriction or another. Even the BSD licenses have a "no endorsement" clause.)
Now if somebody deliberately violates not only the terms, but also the spirit of the license, then that's another matter. It's usually pretty easy to spot when somebody is deliberately violating the license, and we will save our energy for dealing with those cases. We don't anticipate that this will happen very often (especially with a license as unrestrictive as CC-BY) but you can rest assured that we would not allow this to continue unchallenged.
In reply to @mirabilos, the point is that by shoogle
> @mirabilos, the point is that people who take OpenScore files, modify them, and release their modifications under any license of their choosing. That is what matters.
Yes. I like that. It’s just that CC licences are not the tool of choice for that.
For the OpenScore contributors, request CC0 plus a statement that sublicensing as part of the OpenScore project is explicitly permitted.
For the OpenScore results, CC-BY plus a statement like “Licensor also grants the right to sublicence Adapted Material as long as the chosen terms ensure that Attribution, as in CC-BY 4.0 Section 3(a)(1)(A) items (i), (ii), and, when reasonably practicable, (v), is retained (if supplied) and any request to remove those as per Section 3(a)(3) are honoured.” would provide maximum adaptibility.
> especially with a license as unrestrictive as CC-BY
Seen from the BSD camp (“copycentre” or “copyfree”), CC-BY is close to being a weak copyleft, unfortunately, not as “unrestrictive”. It’s also very complex. The statement I suggested above, while complex in itself (which could be explained away in a FAQ), ensures that downstreams can choose any licence for their derivative works as long as the attribution is kept (or removed upon request of the attributed party).
If you want to make it even easier, require a link back or attribution only (for OpenScore, even the 3(a)(3) request is unlikely):
“Licensor also grants the right to sublicence Adapted Material as long as the chosen terms ensure that Attribution, as in CC-BY 4.0 Section 3(a)(1)(A)(v) or, when not reasonably practicable, 3(a)(1)(A)(i), is retained.”
In reply to > @mirabilos, the point is by mirabilos
We have decided to license OpenScore editions under CC0.
The only CC-BY requirement that we actually cared about was attribution. We were prepared to waive all other requirements, but for the sake of keeping things simple we have decided just to go for full CC0.
In reply to We have decided to license by shoogle
OK. You could put a Gentlemen’s Agreement on the site asking all recipients to attribute.
You could even dual-licence it with this:
“CC-BY 4.0, waiving §2(a)(5)(B) [the clause making it not Ⓕ Copyfree], §3(a)(1)(A)(iii), §3(a)(1)(C) and §3(a)(4) [to allow licensees to choose other licences while retaining attribution], §3(a)(1)(B) and §3(a)(3) [for practicability]”
This is because the CC 4.0 licences have better wording than CC0 in many cases, so users can choose which of the two to pick, and you still get the attribution to the MuseScore community and even a backlink when people choose the CC-BY+waiver version, and with the Gentlemen’s Agreement (which is the location I’d put the dual-licence notice¹) you get the attribution.
¹) because I agree that this would confuse many, I’d only advertise CC0 by default and put this somewhere unobtrusive
I'm really excited about this project, and I want to contribute. I don't have much cash but I would love to help by donating my time and experience converting classical scores to the musescore format. Any particular guidelines I should follow as far as which editions to go on, which pieces are high priority, and any formatting guidelines?
In reply to I'm really excited about this by NoMusicTuesdays
@thistof See https://musescore.org/en/user/57401/blog/2017/02/11/openscore-join-tran… for all answers on how to contribute as a transcriber to OpenScore.