MakeMusic makes a great move in hiring Good

MakeMusic, the company behind Finale [http://www.finalemusic.com/finale/default.aspx], has entered into an agreement to purchase Recordare [http://www.recordare.com/]. You can see the press release here [http://www.makemusic.com/press_releases.aspx?pid=526] but here's the really important part (hyperlinks mine): Under the terms of the agreement, MakeMusic is purchasing the MusicXML [http://www.recordare.com/musicxml]™ open format and Dolet® software technology, including copyrights, source code, and trademarks. MakeMusic also announced that the founder of Recordare and inventor of MusicXML, Michael Good [http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgood], will be joining MakeMusic as the Director of Digital Sheet Music. A few people, myself included, were both excited for Recordare/Good but were also wondering what this means for the future of MusicXML in terms of remaining open so here's the scoop - posted on November 2, 2011 - from Michael Good himself on the MusicXML discussion list [http://www.recordare.com/musicxml/mailing-list]: ... MusicXML will remain an open format. MusicXML will continue to be licensed under the same open, royalty-free terms it has today. MusicXML's value comes from being an open format that anybody can freely use in their products and services. That will not change. Community development of future versions of the MusicXML format will not change. What will change is that MusicXML will now be supported with a larger company with more resources. There are exciting possibilities ahead! Personally, I'm not worried. In terms of XML approaches to music encoding, there's MusicXML and then there's everything else. Mr. Good's known all along that building relationships that ensure software support is a key to success for the format. He's even been kind to the little guys: emailing me and commenting on this blog in regard to some of my work with MusicXML for digital libraries. So congratulations to Michael Good and MusicXML. I'm looking forward to hearing the next movement.