The Northlight pledge

Music belongs to everyone. So should the tools for making it.

We think anyone who wants to make music should have the tools to do it, and should be able to keep them. This page sets out what we believe and what we promise. Hold us to it.

What we believe

Anyone should be able to make music. Recording a song, scoring a short film, mixing a friend’s band: none of it should depend on what you earn, where you live, or whether a company still sells the software you learned on. A computer and the wish to make something should be enough.

The tools you depend on should belong to you. When the software that holds your work can have its price raised, its features locked or its servers switched off, your work is never quite yours. Free software can’t be taken back.

You should be able to see how your tools work. In Northlight, a compressor, a time-stretch or a mixer is code that anyone can read. Someone curious about how audio software works can learn from it, and someone who finds a fault can see why it happens and fix it.

The people who use Northlight should shape it. They know best what it needs. Their bug reports, ideas, documentation and code decide where it goes, and we make decisions where they can see them.

What we promise

1. Northlight will always be free of charge. There is no price or subscription, and there will never be a paid “pro” edition with features held back.
2. You will never need an account. Northlight works offline. It will never ask you to sign in, activate a licence or check in with a server before you can use it.
3. What you make is yours. Northlight claims nothing over your music. Release it, sell it or give it away, and you owe us nothing, not even a credit.
4. Your data stays with you. Northlight sends nothing about you or your work anywhere. If we ever add crash reports, usage statistics or update checks, they will be off until you turn them on, and we will say exactly what they send.
5. Your projects stay readable. Projects are saved as plain text that any program can open, and your recordings as ordinary audio files. You will never need Northlight’s permission to get at your own work.
6. The code stays open. Every release is free software under the GNU AGPLv3. Anyone who receives Northlight is entitled to its source code, and contributors keep the copyright in what they write, so nobody, including us, can turn it into a closed product.
7. We build it for everyone. Every part of Northlight should work from the keyboard and with a screen reader, in high contrast and at any display scale. Where it falls short, that is a bug, and we treat it as one.
8. We work in the open. Plans, bug reports and discussions are public. When we make a decision, we write down why.

Where we are today

Northlight runs only on Windows for now. The code is written so it can be ported, but until it is, people on other systems can’t use it. It also hasn’t had its first release yet: you can build it yourself today, and installers will follow.

What we ask of you

Use it and make something. Tell us what’s broken and what’s missing, help someone else get started, and if you can, improve the manual or the code. Here’s how to join in.