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While there is room for arguments whether these changes to Audacity actually constitutes spying, I believe it's rather their vague wording (and potential reach)

While there is room for arguments whether these changes to Audacity actually constitutes spying, I believe it's rather their vague wording (and potential reach) that worries people. Rightfully so, I would say. More often than not, developments like these don't end up well. Also the relative little info there is known about this new owner (or backers) appears worrisome. Anyone knows if there is more known about this new owner, their history and or financial backers? When this news initially broke, I remember there was a lot of mystery (with some few red flags) surrounding this new owner. I got an uncomfortable feeling that this could even be a front or proxy for a commercial entity that sees Audacity as competition. Not sure how much was payed, but this could be a relatively cheap way of knocking out an open source alternative. On the other hand, abusing an existing install base for any kind of intelligence harvesting also is a popular business model these days (actually criminal in many countries, but sadly hardly ever enforced as such). Either way, after reading several pages of back and forth on this issue a while ago, I'm convinced that these new owners either don't quite get what they bought (or what it means) or that they do but simply can't really care (and therefore can't be trusted). Until there's a fork, I'm not toughing this with a ten feet pole.

p49k 5y ago
> Anyone knows if there is more known about this new owner They are a known entity (owners of the well-known Ultimate Guitar site), and their previous purchases make it clear what their likely motivation is with Audacity: to make money in a somewhat standard way among startups these days. They are likely adding trackers so that they can sell ads within audacity and improve their ad targeting on their actual sites. They will likely add premium features to Audacity and sell some kind of subscription service. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same kind of dark patterns/false urgency that you see in the Ultimate Guitar app. I think that people should be legitimately concerned, but their behavior is no worse than 90% of the startups discussed on HN (not to say that's a good thing, but just to give perspective)
- elmo2you 5y ago
  Thank you. It sure sounds plausible, as much as I dislike it. It's one thing to see startups involved in questionable business practices with their own/new products. Quite another seeing existing useful software be destroyed by it. Looks like all that talk about the GPL being too restrictive doesn't mean that much in practice, if stunts like these can still be pulled.

p49k 5y ago

> Anyone knows if there is more known about this new owner They are a known entity (owners of the well-known Ultimate Guitar site), and their previous purchases make it clear what their likely motivation is with Audacity: to make money in a somewhat standard way among startups these days. They are likely adding trackers so that they can sell ads within audacity and improve their ad targeting on their actual sites. They will likely add premium features to Audacity and sell some kind of subscription service. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same kind of dark patterns/false urgency that you see in the Ultimate Guitar app. I think that people should be legitimately concerned, but their behavior is no worse than 90% of the startups discussed on HN (not to say that's a good thing, but just to give perspective)

elmo2you 5y ago
Thank you. It sure sounds plausible, as much as I dislike it. It's one thing to see startups involved in questionable business practices with their own/new products. Quite another seeing existing useful software be destroyed by it. Looks like all that talk about the GPL being too restrictive doesn't mean that much in practice, if stunts like these can still be pulled.