Smells like yet another cynical ploy to attract VC investment to me. Tell everyone your product is "open source", create some excitement and likes on social media, rope a bunch of hopeful idiots into your Ko-Fi or Kickstarter campaign, and suddenly it looks like you have a viable product on your hands! Sweeten the deal with a bit of "AI integration", and say how great your product will be for education, and the VC's will be virtually busting down your door!

The moment you've got some VC's hooked, though, any promises of being open source that you may or may not have made can be sorrowfully reneged. "We just couldn't get the community engagement", you say (subtly hinting that it's somehow _our_ fault that you have to go back on your word), or some other throwaway excuse to that effect.

Do your homework folks. Go have a look at https://github.com/andremichelle, where you'll see very, very little evidence that André Michelle has _any_ interest at all in creating open source software. Review his GitHub contribution history over the past 11 years. He made three code pull requests (contributions to other open source projects). Three. In eleven years. Not what you'd expect to see from someone wants to "democratize electronic music production" by creating an open source DAW.

Finally, you all should know that it was André's long-running frustration at Audiotools lack of funding that lead to his departure. You can read the whole saga here: https://web.archive.org/web/20240428...ocumentary.pdf. The short version is: in on the ground floor (like, basically invented the thing!), worked his ass off, no money, no business plan, and no investors. He alleges that when Audiotool did finally find an investor, he was cheated out of long-promised shares.

Sounds like a shit show, and I sympathise, believe me, but look at his central complaint: Audiotool hadn't done what was necessary for it to become a _commercial success_. Now he's out on his own with a grand plan to accomplish what Audiotool failed to do, and make lots of money. Do you really think that his goal is to live off a Ko-fi campaign, Patreon members, and merch sales? No ****ing way! His eye's on the prize: venture capitalists with fat, bulging wallets.