The JUCE team has announced the acquisition of JUCE by PACE Anti-Piracy Inc. You may not have heard of PACE or JUCE so why does this announcement matter? In this article, we investigate what JUCE and PACE do, how they impact on what we do and what effect this news will have.

What Is JUCE?

JUCE is one of those tools that is in the plugins we use to make audio but are probably not aware of. The Wikipedia post on JUCE says…

“JUCE is a partially open-source cross-platform C++ application framework, used for the development of desktop and mobile applications. JUCE is used in particular for its GUI and plug-ins libraries. The aim of JUCE is to allow software to be written such that the same source code will compile and run identically on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms. It supports various development environments and compilers.”

JUCE and Raw Material Software were set up back in 2004 before being acquired in November 2014 by London-based hardware manufacturer ROLI. As part of the acquisition, JUCE founder Jules Storer joined ROLI as head of software architecture, and editor-in-chief of JUCE. At the time Jules told JUCE users that

...for the foreseeable future, it's still going to be me who either writes or approves every line of code that gets into the library. I'm hoping that within a couple of years we'll have a team of brilliant coders who are all pumping out code that perfectly matches the quality and style of the JUCE codebase.

ROLI also worked with the JUCE team and the JUCE community to create the Audio Developer Conference, the foremost meeting of audio software and hardware developers.

The Acquisition

Roland Lamb, founder and CEO of ROLI, said,

“It has been a pleasure and an honor for ROLI to be a steward of JUCE over the last six years. We’re really proud of the work we’ve done to build the framework, grow the community and start ADC. I believe that PACE will be an ideal new home for the framework and the conference. They have a strong track-record of serving developers with essential tools, and Allen is a true technologist who has the leadership vision and technical understanding to help take JUCE to the next level.”

This acquisition aims to provide JUCE with the opportunity to grow further within an entirely developer-focused company, to execute on an ambitious roadmap and continue to serve the needs of the audio developer community.

Jules Storer, the founder of JUCE, told us…

“ROLI has been a great home for JUCE, helping it grow into one of the most important tools in the audio industry... However, that importance also meant that it began to attract some acquisition offers! Of the many companies who expressed an interest, PACE came out tops for us in terms of what a good owner of JUCE needs to offer: their culture is completely developer-focused, they're a neutral company who are in the licensing business and already have relationships with many JUCE customers, and their motivations for owning it align with those of the JUCE team.

We’ve been impressed by the depth of the technology they're working on, and we were all very happy to give the go-ahead for this. For me personally, my day-to-day schedule won't change much - I'll still remain at ROLI, mainly working on SOUL, but also advising the JUCE/PACE team.”

The intention is that both PACE and JUCE will benefit from an ecosystem of audio developers and tools, and we understand that JUCE remains committed to helping the entire community to learn from each other, share ideas, and create world-class software.

What Is PACE?

PACE specialises in software IP protection and secure licensing and has been making developer tools for software creators for over 35 years. As users, we are most aware of PACE whenever we use the iLok system.

PACE’s tools are used by a large number of world-class audio software publishers and because of this PACE believes that they understand the importance of JUCE as a foundational piece of industry software infrastructure.

Allen Cronce, founder and CEO of PACE told us…

“I’ve always had the utmost respect for Jules, his work, and the team he’s put together. The JUCE framework is very important to the pro audio community and our customers. We’re happy to give the JUCE team a new home and look forward to supporting their continued efforts that make JUCE a world-class application framework.”

How Will This Affect Us As Plugin Users?

The simple answer is probably not at all. Both PACE and JUCE are products and tools that serve the developers that make the plugins we use. The only time we are aware of PACE is when we use an iLok or an iLok license through the iLok License Manager or the iLok dongle. Most of what PACE does for software developers is very much under the hood. The same is true for developers that use the JUCE platform to help them create the plugins and audio software we use every day.

Will JUCE be better off with PACE? It seems to us that it is a better fit for JUCE to be part of PACE as both tools support plugin developers make great tools to help us be creative. But only time will tell…