Honestly, not really. I feel like this is one of the very few areas that doesn’t really have any great open source options. Reaper is about the closest you’re gonna get. It’s not open source, but as far as fair licence and good price without sacrificing any usability, it’s kind of in a league of its own. It was started by the guy who made Winamp.
Yeah Reaper isn't open source, but the licensing system is an amazing breath of fresh air. You can just download it and start using it with no account sign up process and once the free trial (60 days) ends all that happens is a nag screen pops up. You can literally just keep closing the nag screen and never buy the software (though this is an illegal use of the product) but why would you do that if you have the money to support the devs? I bought it as soon as I realized how easy it was to demo and start using.
If one of the primary points of open source software is to promote accessibility, Reaper goes a long way towards this without actually being open source. There is no DRM, there is no need to make an account and do some long sign up process to get Reaper up and running, there is no iLok required (vomits in mouth a little). You can download it in and start working on a project as quickly as your computer can finish installing it.
From Reaper's license popup:
> We are showing this message, instead of crippling this evaluation version of REAPER, because we do not feel technological enforcement of licensing policy is in the best interest of our customers
Reaper is the only professional artistic software (sold as a product) I have ever come across that is remotely realistic about how people use it. Nobody has ever pirated Reaper in the history of Reaper, there is no point and that is how software should work in a more sane world.
One of the Reaper devs once said on their forums (or maybe it was KVR) that they never want to add anti-piracy measures to Reaper because it's just a cost-center for development with no real payoff. It can potentially hurt paying customers, and it almost never converts pirates. If someone doesn't want to pay, music software is easy to pirate. If it's somehow not easy to pirate (Cubase was crack-free for several years), there's so many competing products with the same utilities, they will just pirate one of your competitors.
Exactly anti-piracy measures only punish paying customers because the pirated version won't have them. I think several big name musicians (with the money to pay for a software license) have been caught using the pirated version of music software simply because the pirated version doesn't require some stupid BS that the legal version does. I.e. you can get it running on your gigging laptop and not have to worry about juggling how many computers are currently using your license, stupid iLok usb dongles or some other nonsense. The pirated version just works.
Further, 99% of digital audio workstation customers start off as broke kids with no money to feasibly drop on a music production software that costs $150 or more. So a huge amount of future paying DAW customers are piracy converts anyways. Making a DAW that can't be pirated is a sure way to shove your future customer base onto somebody else's DAW that can.
