I remember the concern years ago was: since the application was bought (acquired?) and the tool was still publically free, that the new owners had added the spyware to try and monetize the data coming from said spyware/telemetry.

After reading your comment I went back and did some cursory searches, and it looks like the general concensus is that its less of a concern than it was originally - although, there is still uncertainty around how the tool is being monetized, which is enough for some to stop using it.

[–] racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago

It just joined the musescore project, great open source music notation software. For funding the only commercial thing they offer is a site where you can upload & download scores, with the paying part also paying licensining fees for copyrighted music. Imo all looks very legit. I was already familiar with musescore before this drama, and watched some of tantacrul (head of the musescore project, and now also audacity i guess). He's a very down to earth guy that has quite some insightful videos on the musescore development and figuring out what to keep/remove when going for new versions. But also great videos regarding other topics.

So far i've seen nothing that rings any alarm bells. The open source community can sometimes be a bit too sensitive regarding paid services linked to open source software. But in this case as long as the actual software remains open source, and the paid part actually adds value (a nice place to exchange sheet music, without any copyright issues as that's covered by your payment, so a very legit reason to ask money), why not?