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The audacity of it! (pun intended) Fork it, call it Audacious and be done with it. There’s no reason for an offline application to collect data “necessary for l

The audacity of it! (pun intended) Fork it, call it Audacious and be done with it. There’s no reason for an offline application to collect data “necessary for law enforcement”. We’re already in an age where software is increasingly tilting towards becoming SaaS. We don’t need offline applications to behave as if they’re online or SaaS ones. If this is only about telemetry or analytics, make it an opt-in choice on first run. I wasn’t aware that Audacity had been acquired by The Muse Group recently. [1] I don’t think this will go well for users when private interests and concerns conflict with public ones. The next obvious question would be about equivalent alternatives that are free and open source. [1]: https://www.prosoundnetwork.com/business/audacity-acquired-by-muse-group https://www.prosoundnetwork.com/business/audacity-acquired-b...

steanne 5y ago
that'll cause some confusion: https://audacious-media-player.org/ https://audacious-media-player.org/
- bhrgunatha 5y ago
  Maybe a musical synonym of Audacity, like Pluck.
jraph 5y ago
> The audacity of it! (pun intended) Fork it, call it Audacious and be done with it. Already taken by an audio related project: https://audacious-media-player.org/ https://audacious-media-player.org/ I have used it for a long time. To my surprise, it is still alive and seems to have evolved a bit seeing the screenshot and it looks good, I think I'll look into it.
- martinkunev 5y ago
  There already is software called audacious. Apparently it's called Tenacity now.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gentleman11 5y ago
Somebody linked this on Reddit: https://github.com/binaergewitter/audiocity https://github.com/binaergewitter/audiocity > Audacity fork without any non-free software or telemetry, as all GPL software should.
- badlogic 5y ago
  The author has only changed the license text and README. No changes to the code base have been made. The networking capabilities of Audacity seem to be disabled by default anyways when building from source.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    that's good enough for me. someone who makes sure that this network stuff is never activated without my knowledge. as a linux user, i expect my distribution to take care of that, but for others it's good to promote a publicly available branch that safeguards our privacy
  - bbarnett 5y ago
    You don't write networking code, just for kicks and giggles. The new Audacity owners (named elsewhere) are moving in a certain direction. A potentially unpleasant one. We should be doing as this post is, keeping an eye on each strange/potentially nefarious change made.
- gizdan 5y ago
  The issue with these kinds of forks is that it'll eventually lose steam and no one will maintain it any more, or they'll fall far behind. In this case, the person has forked it, and is already lost interest as per the read me. On top of that, it's some 200+ commits behind.
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    Audacity is a simple program and needs no updates.
newswasboring 5y ago
> I wasn’t aware that Audacity had been acquired by The Muse Group recently. Am I the only one who thinks this the bigger scandal? An open source project sold to a company?
- 01100011 5y ago
  So what? Audacity is LGPL. The company can't un-GPL it.
  - progre 5y ago
    Since they have had most of the copyright for contributions assigned to them they can rewrite the few parts that they dont have copyright for and relicense the whole thing though.
    - joosters 5y ago
      But so what? The fact that it is (or was) open source means that anyone can still take and re-use the code, regardless of whether it gets re-licensed in the future. The re-licensing prevents nothing.
      - progre 5y ago
        Sure, but forking it is a completely unneccesary duplication of efforts moving Audacity forward thats only motivated by the introduced telemetry.
- input_sh 5y ago
  What's the scandal? There are companies build enterprise features on top of open source software, there are companies that hire lead devs of open source software to work on it, etc. It's about what they do to it after acquisition. If they mistreat it and it's popular enough, it will be forked.
  - toyg 5y ago
cookiengineer 5y ago
I've forked the codebase and removed most of the code related to networking, crash reports or sentry telemetry. While I have been cautious and was trying to make sure that not any code could run by mistake (or false environment variable / ifdef checks down the line), I have to say that The Muse Group's intent seem to have been clearly that the code can be built without any of the tracking. All networking related features seem to have been optional, and could be disabled via environment variables like `HAS_NETWORKING` or `HAS_SENTRY_REPORTING` etc. I've detailed this more in my comment in the GitHub repository's issue [1] to make sure others will read about it, too. Personally I think this is a classical miscommunication error, and it seems as the intent of Muse Group was to be as legally compliant as possible. Of course, a dialog where end-users could opt-in to everything would've been nicer than enabling/disabling it via build environment flags - but that could've been a simple rational discussion. My current temporary (and building) fork is available at GitHub, too [2] and I would love to see this project being governed by a community of developers rather than a single owner that can potentially dictate integration of tracking mechanisms on others. [1] https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1213#issuecomment-873547330 https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1213#issuecommen... [2] https://github.com/cookiengineer/audacity https://github.com/cookiengineer/audacity
- MikeUt 5y ago
  > it seems as the intent of Muse Group was to be as legally compliant as possible. They deliberately and unnecessarily put themselves in a position where legal compliance could mean betrayal of their users.
- perihelions 5y ago
  "Personally I think this is a classical miscommunication error, and it seems as the intent of Muse Group was to be as legally compliant as possible." To be clear, this legal compliance is with the laws and government of Russia, where the parent company is domiciled. >"For the purposes of this Notice, WSM Group with registered office at Moskovsky pr-t,40-1301, Kaliningrad, Russia, 236004 (“Audacity“, “us“, “we“, or “our“) acts as the data controller for the Personal Data that is collected via the App and through the App." >"All your personal data is stored on our servers in the European Economic Area (EEA). However, we are occasionally required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA." https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/ https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/
PicassoCTs 5y ago
Cooperations are the bacteria/viruses of the open source ecosystem. If one gets infected, the project is left behind to die, while a new project is recreated.
MonaroVXR 5y ago
https://github.com/Binaergewitter/audiocity https://github.com/Binaergewitter/audiocity Is looking for maintainers, i'm not affiliated.
raxxorrax 5y ago
> There’s no reason to collect data “necessary for law enforcement”. in any application on your device. Period.

steanne 5y ago

that'll cause some confusion: https://audacious-media-player.org/ https://audacious-media-player.org/

bhrgunatha 5y ago
Maybe a musical synonym of Audacity, like Pluck.

jraph 5y ago

> The audacity of it! (pun intended) Fork it, call it Audacious and be done with it. Already taken by an audio related project: https://audacious-media-player.org/ https://audacious-media-player.org/ I have used it for a long time. To my surprise, it is still alive and seems to have evolved a bit seeing the screenshot and it looks good, I think I'll look into it.

martinkunev 5y ago
There already is software called audacious. Apparently it's called Tenacity now.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gentleman11 5y ago

Somebody linked this on Reddit: https://github.com/binaergewitter/audiocity https://github.com/binaergewitter/audiocity > Audacity fork without any non-free software or telemetry, as all GPL software should.

badlogic 5y ago
The author has only changed the license text and README. No changes to the code base have been made. The networking capabilities of Audacity seem to be disabled by default anyways when building from source.
- em-bee 5y ago
  that's good enough for me. someone who makes sure that this network stuff is never activated without my knowledge. as a linux user, i expect my distribution to take care of that, but for others it's good to promote a publicly available branch that safeguards our privacy
- bbarnett 5y ago
  You don't write networking code, just for kicks and giggles. The new Audacity owners (named elsewhere) are moving in a certain direction. A potentially unpleasant one. We should be doing as this post is, keeping an eye on each strange/potentially nefarious change made.
gizdan 5y ago
The issue with these kinds of forks is that it'll eventually lose steam and no one will maintain it any more, or they'll fall far behind. In this case, the person has forked it, and is already lost interest as per the read me. On top of that, it's some 200+ commits behind.
- Bancakes 5y ago
  Audacity is a simple program and needs no updates.

newswasboring 5y ago

> I wasn’t aware that Audacity had been acquired by The Muse Group recently. Am I the only one who thinks this the bigger scandal? An open source project sold to a company?

01100011 5y ago
So what? Audacity is LGPL. The company can't un-GPL it.
- progre 5y ago
  Since they have had most of the copyright for contributions assigned to them they can rewrite the few parts that they dont have copyright for and relicense the whole thing though.
  - joosters 5y ago
    But so what? The fact that it is (or was) open source means that anyone can still take and re-use the code, regardless of whether it gets re-licensed in the future. The re-licensing prevents nothing.
    - progre 5y ago
      Sure, but forking it is a completely unneccesary duplication of efforts moving Audacity forward thats only motivated by the introduced telemetry.
input_sh 5y ago
What's the scandal? There are companies build enterprise features on top of open source software, there are companies that hire lead devs of open source software to work on it, etc. It's about what they do to it after acquisition. If they mistreat it and it's popular enough, it will be forked.
- toyg 5y ago

cookiengineer 5y ago

I've forked the codebase and removed most of the code related to networking, crash reports or sentry telemetry. While I have been cautious and was trying to make sure that not any code could run by mistake (or false environment variable / ifdef checks down the line), I have to say that The Muse Group's intent seem to have been clearly that the code can be built without any of the tracking. All networking related features seem to have been optional, and could be disabled via environment variables like `HAS_NETWORKING` or `HAS_SENTRY_REPORTING` etc. I've detailed this more in my comment in the GitHub repository's issue [1] to make sure others will read about it, too. Personally I think this is a classical miscommunication error, and it seems as the intent of Muse Group was to be as legally compliant as possible. Of course, a dialog where end-users could opt-in to everything would've been nicer than enabling/disabling it via build environment flags - but that could've been a simple rational discussion. My current temporary (and building) fork is available at GitHub, too [2] and I would love to see this project being governed by a community of developers rather than a single owner that can potentially dictate integration of tracking mechanisms on others. [1] https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1213#issuecomment-873547330 https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1213#issuecommen... [2] https://github.com/cookiengineer/audacity https://github.com/cookiengineer/audacity

MikeUt 5y ago
> it seems as the intent of Muse Group was to be as legally compliant as possible. They deliberately and unnecessarily put themselves in a position where legal compliance could mean betrayal of their users.
perihelions 5y ago
"Personally I think this is a classical miscommunication error, and it seems as the intent of Muse Group was to be as legally compliant as possible." To be clear, this legal compliance is with the laws and government of Russia, where the parent company is domiciled. >"For the purposes of this Notice, WSM Group with registered office at Moskovsky pr-t,40-1301, Kaliningrad, Russia, 236004 (“Audacity“, “us“, “we“, or “our“) acts as the data controller for the Personal Data that is collected via the App and through the App." >"All your personal data is stored on our servers in the European Economic Area (EEA). However, we are occasionally required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA." https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/ https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/

PicassoCTs 5y ago

Cooperations are the bacteria/viruses of the open source ecosystem. If one gets infected, the project is left behind to die, while a new project is recreated.

MonaroVXR 5y ago

https://github.com/Binaergewitter/audiocity https://github.com/Binaergewitter/audiocity Is looking for maintainers, i'm not affiliated.

raxxorrax 5y ago

> There’s no reason to collect data “necessary for law enforcement”. in any application on your device. Period.