9 ms·

Audacity's team is censoring legitimate questions

82 points by antisol 5y ago

antisol 5y ago
They're almost impressive in their commitment to Gestapo tactics: only 10 mins to close the issue and block me without any comment or justification.
- geofft 5y ago
  Normally I'd say "Gestapo tactics" is an exaggeration for deleting a comment someone wrote on the internet, but given that the company in question has threatened someone with the specific brutality of the Chinese police, I think it might be warranted here. https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/muse_group_deportation_threat/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/muse_group_deportatio... > I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content. > If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country. This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his – 'Fuck 学习强国', which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received.
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    Wow. Muse Group went from questionable to shady as fuck in 0.01 seconds.
  - antisol 5y ago
    :O . . . Wow. Just WOW. Here I was thinking I was being hyperbolic.
  - Valmar 5y ago
    That's easily among some of the most disgusting things you could threaten someone with.
  - martimarkov 5y ago
    On what grounds is this downvoted?
    - antisol 5y ago
      Pretty sure the grounds were "the troll factory muse group has hired finds this fact inconvenient"
  - salawat 5y ago
    Ain't life grand when getting into a kerfluffle over who gets to use sequences of 0's and 1's leads to potentially life destroying consequences. IP everybody! Not even once! If it's worth making, it's worth making public!
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  For what it's worth, the tone you struck in the submission here would have resulted in a removal of your comment on any platform I've moderated in my years on the Internet. Constructive criticism is completely fair, but your entitled tone both on GitHub and here on HN, is inappropriate. I'm not at all surprised your issue was removed and you were banned temporarily. Honestly, what are you trying to accomplish here? I'm struggling to see how any of this could be construed as "constructive" at this point, and I'd be surprised if this HN submission doesn't get flagged out shortly.
  - antisol 5y ago
    > what are you trying to accomplish here? Raising awareness of censorship
    - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      It's not censorship. Your comments are still there to be read. They've just decided not to engage with you further. Free speech also includes freedom from speech.
      - antisol 5y ago
        you can quibble over semantics if you want. s/censorship/shitfuckery/g
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      In life, we choose which battles are important and which aren't worth the effort. I'm not sure I'd personally have chosen, "Private organization on a private platform has 'censored' my snarky comment." as a battle worth fighting (though I do sympathize, it does not feel good to be ignored), but I am not you.
      - antisol 5y ago
        My response to this is: "fair enough" :)
gizdan 5y ago
It is obvious that Musescore does not care any more. They're in damage control mode and they're doing a terrible job at that. The fork was the right decision.
- belter 5y ago
  Here is the fork: https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity
  - sundvor 5y ago
    Thanks very much.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
villgax 5y ago
A lot of MuseScore employees just going about & closing issues without reason/resolution.
kadams54 5y ago
No doubt I’ll be voted down, but… if you’re going to ask for mature, open discussions, perhaps you ought to also avoid labeling those on the other side of the discussion as “scumbags”. I’m not a fan of Audacity’s current tracking kerfluffle, but this response swings the pendulum too far in the other direction.
- antisol 5y ago
  In my book you lose the right to not be called a scumbag when you start acting like a scumbag. Blocking me without comment for asking a legitimate question which is not in violation of the code of conduct is the act of a scumbag. If you'd like to debate me on this point, please begin.
  - noitpmeder 5y ago
    I think the point of GP is that you are not helping yourself here. I think it is evident from the initial reaction here on HN that you are throwing away much of the goodwill of many who would have supported your position in the first place.
    - sundvor 5y ago
      It seems there was a lot of history going in to this, and it must have built up over some time to get to that point. But yes, you're completely correct it doesn't read well (at all) to someone coming in with no context (ie likely the vast majority of us). I'm trying to see behind the words as I'm reading about it, nonetheless. It raised very valid concerns about the state of the project; I may have some cleaning time ahead of me on my wife's PC as she recently installed it.
      - antisol 5y ago
        >It seems there was a lot of history going in to this, and it must have built up over some time to get to that point. Maybe not as much as you'd think, but yeah. >I'm trying to see behind the words as I'm reading about it, nonetheless. Well thanks. It does seem that some people find me... let's go with "abrasive". I appreciate you taking the time to try to grok what's going on completely even if you were somewhat put off by the tone :)
Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
I'll be honest, if someone described me as "scumbags who have tried to turn <n> into spyware" on the issue tracker for a project I maintain, I'd probably block them too. That kind of language really doesn't achieve anything, and any issue-tracker is better off without it.
- sundvor 5y ago
  Just closing the issue with no further comment on such an important allegation is not good though. I know my wife recently installed Audacity; I'm going to scramble to figure out what the state of this is now. Thanks Antisol for bringing it to my attention!
  - antisol 5y ago
    This is precisely why I created this issue. My mission is now accomplished. I very much appreciate your thanks :)
  - cgtyoder 5y ago
    Executive Summary: 3.0.2 is "safe"; further versions TBD.
    - sundvor 5y ago
      Appreciated!
- antisol 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27905788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27905788
- belter 5y ago
  If you see the post from geofft, it could be argued the person filling in the issue was being precise and correct. To make it clear, this would be them not you :-)
  - 5y ago
Bigpet 5y ago
lol the OP saying "I was just curious" about "these scumbags" is about as honest as the "this totally was not a threat" from the MuseScore guy. Why be so tone-deaf or intellectually dishonest.
- antisol 5y ago
  sorry, I'm not clear. what are you saying I did dishonestly? Are you saying that I wasn't legitimately asking a question? Because I was. The note about that is 100% factually accurate.
gspr 5y ago
Audacity is dead, thanks to the psychos at MuseGroup. One of the forks will take over, no worries. Until a clear fork wins out, people can always use Debian's version [1], which will of course not contain the the shenanigans as they are DFSG-incompatible [2]. [1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/audacity https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/audacity [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=990737 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=990737
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
The "question" is just rhetorical, asking for confirmation of the worst possible way to interpret something. As such, it's close to the definition of assuming bad faith, and itself hard to interpret as an attempt to resolve anything constructively.
- antisol 5y ago
  The question was absolutely not rhetorical.
- martimarkov 5y ago
  Hey they have the option to answer the OG question. They chose not to. Their behaviour the is one in bad faith to begin with. 1. Ask a legit question 2. Ban If that is not bad faith...
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
    What... you expect someone who is obviously carefully weighing the words they use to reply with "yes, I'm being forced to this! Send help, the boss is evil!!"? No... you wouldn't get answer even it were true. What does it look like under the assumption that there just isn't a grand conspiracy? I. e. the person on Github just isn't the only person working at audacity and is careful not to make promises they can't keep? Then you are just fanning the outrage flames and putting more pressure on someone who has explicitly told you, just now, that they are not in a position to give in to your demands and, less explicitly, that they don't enjoy being put in that situation.
    - antisol 5y ago
      >What... you expect someone who is obviously carefully weighing the words they use to reply with "yes, I'm being forced to this! Send help, the boss is evil!!"? No, I was trying to gauge whether the community agreed with my reading, or if I was being too paranoid in my interpretation. >No... you wouldn't get answer even it were true. Not from the maintainer, but I was asking the community.
    - 5y ago
jmiskovic 5y ago
@antisol You are submitting internet drama you generated to HN. You are using their issue tracker space to call developers scumbags. Looks pretty toxic to me.
- antisol 5y ago
  look deeper
CountDrewku 5y ago
That's not a legitimate question where an answer was expected. That was a statement formed into a question.
- antisol 5y ago
  no it was not.
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    Stop gaslighting. You know full well what the intention was.
    - antisol 5y ago
      Yeah, I do know what the intention was. And you don't. And how dare you presume to tell me otherwise? Asshole.
      - CountDrewku 5y ago
        I mean your response pretty much proves what sort of character you have and implies that you were doing exactly what I accused you of. Good job.
        antisol 5y ago
        It absolutely does not. Unless you can claim to have some evidence of what I was thinking. And if you did make that claim, I know for a fact that you would be wrong. You are being a fucking asshole. Good job.
        dang 5y ago
        Yikes! you can't do that here, whatsoever. Please don't post flamewar comments or attack other users on HN. We ban accounts that do that. We're trying for an entirely different kind of conversation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
There’s a million things to get flustered about on the Internet, but I don’t think this is one of them. Unless I’m confused, like it or not, they don’t owe anyone anything (including a decent/nice response).
- antisol 5y ago
  >they don’t owe anyone anything unrestricted access to the software. One could make an argument that preventing a user from forking violates the GPL under which the software is licensed.
zenexer 5y ago
The company behind Audacity has been doing some absolutely abhorrent things (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005). These deserve to be pointed out on HN because they are abnormal and unprecedented. This is not one of those things. The person submitting this link to HN posted a snarky rhetorical question—while it made a fair point from my perspective, it certainly wasn’t a constructive comment, and I would’ve been expected to be banned from commenting further if I had done the same. Instead they’re now complaining about it on HN. HN posts like these trivialize the far more insidious actions of Muse Group. They make it seem as though this is just another FOSS infighting drama, which clearly isn’t the case after reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005.
- antisol 5y ago
  I'd love it if people would stop assuming it was a rhetorical question in bad faith. I have addressed this multiple times already. It was not rhetorical.
  - zenexer 5y ago
    Nobody is assuming anything. You have presented it as a rhetorical question—work on your presentation if that wasn’t the intention. Nobody said anything about bad faith; in fact, I stated that I agree with the sentiment. What I don’t understand is why you would expect any outcome other than what happened. There’s no need to dramatize something that’s already abhorrent. This particular incident isn’t worthy of its own HN thread. Your own efforts are detrimental to the credibility of the people who are being targeted by Muse Group, as linked above.
    - antisol 5y ago
      >Nobody is assuming anything. "The person submitting this link to HN posted a snarky rhetorical question" is an assumption, and one that I can state categorically and with 100% confidence is incorrect. >You have presented it as a rhetorical question I did not. >work on your presentation if that wasn’t the intention I'm not repeating myself on this again. Go read my comments elsewhere. >Nobody said anything about bad faith You tried to tell me that I had asked a rhetorical question when I did not. That's assuming bad faith. >What I don’t understand is why you would expect any outcome other than what happened Who said that I did? The github issue even mentions my expectations. But I'm sure you read it in its entirety and knew that already. >There’s no need to dramatize something that’s already abhorrent. You're wrong again. By raising the issue on github and then submitting it to HN, at least one more person is aware of it. Which means that I achieved my goal and made the world a better place today. >This particular incident isn’t worthy of its own HN thread. That may or may not be the case, I'm fairly new to HN. I thought it was. I have since re-read the HN rules and I stand by that decision, unless you have a rule that I may have missed that you'd like to point out? >Your own efforts are detrimental to the credibility of the people who are being targeted by Muse Group, as linked above. Not so. As I mentioned, at least one person will be taking a harder look at audacity as a result of this. The impact might not have been as wide as I would have liked, but I did achieve my goal.
coldtea 5y ago
>sound a hell of a lot like a diplomatic way of saying "I have been instructed to add spyware to audacity"? Doesn't sound very constructive. Rude is more like it. How about "to add usage telemetry"?
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
Here's an interesting read on the subject of telemetry in Audacity: https://www.reddit.com/r/audacity/comments/of0b4s/breakdown_of_all_data_collected_by_audacity/ https://www.reddit.com/r/audacity/comments/of0b4s/breakdown_... Telemetry is used for the kind of boring stuff most devs would expect: reporting on exceptions so that bugs can be investigated. As the thread points out, Audacity is still open-source so you can audit the codebase if you'd like. There's certainly no "spyware" code in there that's logging keystrokes or turning on your webcam. I'm sure anyone who develops software understands why it's useful to get logs when your software catches exceptions.
- antisol 5y ago
  We could get into a huge and involved debate on the purported merits of telemetry. >I'm sure anyone who develops software understands why it's useful to get logs when your software catches exceptions. For example, if we were to get into such a debate, my first question would be "Why does that have to be an automatic process, happening without the users knowledge or consent?" But that's not really what I'm here for. You won't ever convince me that telemetry is a good idea. And you especially won't convince me that it's necessary. I think it's probably not worth the time that it'd take to have that debate. You will not convince me, and I can't be bothered trying to convince you.
em-bee 5y ago
the problem is that it is you who think they act like scumbags, and they themselves don't. by resorting to name calling, regardless of whether it is justified, you are closing the door to any sort of constructive resolution. in https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889#discussioncomment-752594 https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889#discuss... you were not asking a question, but you were making an accusation. again, your concern may be legitimate, the tone in which you voiced it was not constructive. blocking you may be an overreaction, but it is no worse of an overreaction than making accusations and name calling instead of asking an actual question. i don't even know what you are asking there, and what kind of answer you expect from the developers. i mean you are asking if anyone agrees with your interpretation of the lead devs statement. how does that help move the conversation forward? how does it help to resolve the issue? and what response do you expect from the lead dev on that? "yes"? there is no answer that would be satisfactory. if we want to resolve this we, as concerned users, need to voice our concerns in such a way that the developers actually have a chance to make the necessary corrections and regain our trust.
- antisol 5y ago
  > and they themselves don't You're assuming good faith where it's very clear that none exists. > name calling There's no name calling in there, only factually accurate descriptions. > you are closing the door to any sort of constructive resolution No. Let's be honest here: Muse did that when they blocked me initially. Then they did it again when they failed to answer basic questions put to them by the community. Then they did it again with the threats to the chinese guy. Then I did it once. Then they did it again when they blocked me for raising this issue. > making accusations and name calling instead of asking an actual question. What accusation did I make? I've been over this supposed "name calling" already. I'll refrain from repeating myself. > i don't even know what you are asking there, and what kind of answer you expect from the developers. I've addressed this in my other comments here. I'd suggest you read them if you're actually looking for an answer to this. > i mean you are asking if anyone agrees with your interpretation of the lead devs statement. how does that help move the conversation forward? how does it help to resolve the issue? As I've already explained elsewhere, I was trying to gauge whether my interpretation was too paranoid. I was hoping that maybe the community might say "no, you're just paranoid". Instead the maintainer said in the strongest possible terms that I wasn't being paranoid enough. It helps to move the conversation forward by helping me decide whether I'm just paranoid, and by helping to establish whether there is any hope for the audacity project, or whether a fork is absolutely necessary (turns out it is). All of those data points are useful for resolving the issue. I will grant that perhaps I should have added a "legit question" or something in there since it would appear that most people incorrectly interpreted it as purely rhetorical. But I'd also point out that the reactions from the community are overwhelmingly in agreement with my assessment. > and what response do you expect from the lead dev on that? "yes"? I've answered that elsewhere already, too. See my other comments. > there is no answer that would be satisfactory. Not from the dev. But I wasn't asking them. > if we want to resolve this we, as concerned users, need to voice our concerns in such a way that the developers actually have a chance to make the necessary corrections and regain our trust. Again, you're assuming good faith where it's very clear that none exists. I'd argue that if we want to resolve this we, as concerned users, need to support an audacity fork ASAP. You have clearly not looked into this situation in enough depth. Muse have had and squandered multiple opportunities to regain our trust.
blooalien 5y ago
I just find myself beyond shocked that a dispute over software could devolve to literal death threats, deportation threats, and the level of just general "ass-hattery" this whole thing turned into. It's so far beyond ridiculous that I wouldn't have even believed it without verifying it myself had someone just told me about it rather than having witnessed the insanity of it personally.

82 points by antisol 5y ago

They're almost impressive in their commitment to Gestapo tactics: only 10 mins to close the issue and block me without any comment or justification.

geofft 5y ago
Normally I'd say "Gestapo tactics" is an exaggeration for deleting a comment someone wrote on the internet, but given that the company in question has threatened someone with the specific brutality of the Chinese police, I think it might be warranted here. https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/muse_group_deportation_threat/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/20/muse_group_deportatio... > I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content. > If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country. This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his – 'Fuck 学习强国', which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  Wow. Muse Group went from questionable to shady as fuck in 0.01 seconds.
- antisol 5y ago
  :O . . . Wow. Just WOW. Here I was thinking I was being hyperbolic.
- Valmar 5y ago
  That's easily among some of the most disgusting things you could threaten someone with.
- martimarkov 5y ago
  On what grounds is this downvoted?
  - antisol 5y ago
    Pretty sure the grounds were "the troll factory muse group has hired finds this fact inconvenient"
- salawat 5y ago
  Ain't life grand when getting into a kerfluffle over who gets to use sequences of 0's and 1's leads to potentially life destroying consequences. IP everybody! Not even once! If it's worth making, it's worth making public!
TameAntelope 5y ago
For what it's worth, the tone you struck in the submission here would have resulted in a removal of your comment on any platform I've moderated in my years on the Internet. Constructive criticism is completely fair, but your entitled tone both on GitHub and here on HN, is inappropriate. I'm not at all surprised your issue was removed and you were banned temporarily. Honestly, what are you trying to accomplish here? I'm struggling to see how any of this could be construed as "constructive" at this point, and I'd be surprised if this HN submission doesn't get flagged out shortly.
- antisol 5y ago
  > what are you trying to accomplish here? Raising awareness of censorship
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    It's not censorship. Your comments are still there to be read. They've just decided not to engage with you further. Free speech also includes freedom from speech.
    - antisol 5y ago
      you can quibble over semantics if you want. s/censorship/shitfuckery/g
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    In life, we choose which battles are important and which aren't worth the effort. I'm not sure I'd personally have chosen, "Private organization on a private platform has 'censored' my snarky comment." as a battle worth fighting (though I do sympathize, it does not feel good to be ignored), but I am not you.
    - antisol 5y ago
      My response to this is: "fair enough" :)

gizdan 5y ago

It is obvious that Musescore does not care any more. They're in damage control mode and they're doing a terrible job at that. The fork was the right decision.

belter 5y ago
Here is the fork: https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity
- sundvor 5y ago
  Thanks very much.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

villgax 5y ago

A lot of MuseScore employees just going about & closing issues without reason/resolution.

kadams54 5y ago

No doubt I’ll be voted down, but… if you’re going to ask for mature, open discussions, perhaps you ought to also avoid labeling those on the other side of the discussion as “scumbags”. I’m not a fan of Audacity’s current tracking kerfluffle, but this response swings the pendulum too far in the other direction.

antisol 5y ago
In my book you lose the right to not be called a scumbag when you start acting like a scumbag. Blocking me without comment for asking a legitimate question which is not in violation of the code of conduct is the act of a scumbag. If you'd like to debate me on this point, please begin.
- noitpmeder 5y ago
  I think the point of GP is that you are not helping yourself here. I think it is evident from the initial reaction here on HN that you are throwing away much of the goodwill of many who would have supported your position in the first place.
  - sundvor 5y ago
    It seems there was a lot of history going in to this, and it must have built up over some time to get to that point. But yes, you're completely correct it doesn't read well (at all) to someone coming in with no context (ie likely the vast majority of us). I'm trying to see behind the words as I'm reading about it, nonetheless. It raised very valid concerns about the state of the project; I may have some cleaning time ahead of me on my wife's PC as she recently installed it.
    - antisol 5y ago
      >It seems there was a lot of history going in to this, and it must have built up over some time to get to that point. Maybe not as much as you'd think, but yeah. >I'm trying to see behind the words as I'm reading about it, nonetheless. Well thanks. It does seem that some people find me... let's go with "abrasive". I appreciate you taking the time to try to grok what's going on completely even if you were somewhat put off by the tone :)

Doctor_Fegg 5y ago

I'll be honest, if someone described me as "scumbags who have tried to turn <n> into spyware" on the issue tracker for a project I maintain, I'd probably block them too. That kind of language really doesn't achieve anything, and any issue-tracker is better off without it.

sundvor 5y ago
Just closing the issue with no further comment on such an important allegation is not good though. I know my wife recently installed Audacity; I'm going to scramble to figure out what the state of this is now. Thanks Antisol for bringing it to my attention!
- antisol 5y ago
  This is precisely why I created this issue. My mission is now accomplished. I very much appreciate your thanks :)
- cgtyoder 5y ago
  Executive Summary: 3.0.2 is "safe"; further versions TBD.
  - sundvor 5y ago
    Appreciated!
antisol 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27905788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27905788
belter 5y ago
If you see the post from geofft, it could be argued the person filling in the issue was being precise and correct. To make it clear, this would be them not you :-)
- 5y ago

Bigpet 5y ago

lol the OP saying "I was just curious" about "these scumbags" is about as honest as the "this totally was not a threat" from the MuseScore guy. Why be so tone-deaf or intellectually dishonest.

antisol 5y ago
sorry, I'm not clear. what are you saying I did dishonestly? Are you saying that I wasn't legitimately asking a question? Because I was. The note about that is 100% factually accurate.

gspr 5y ago

Audacity is dead, thanks to the psychos at MuseGroup. One of the forks will take over, no worries. Until a clear fork wins out, people can always use Debian's version [1], which will of course not contain the the shenanigans as they are DFSG-incompatible [2]. [1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/audacity https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/audacity [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=990737 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=990737

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

The "question" is just rhetorical, asking for confirmation of the worst possible way to interpret something. As such, it's close to the definition of assuming bad faith, and itself hard to interpret as an attempt to resolve anything constructively.

antisol 5y ago
The question was absolutely not rhetorical.
martimarkov 5y ago
Hey they have the option to answer the OG question. They chose not to. Their behaviour the is one in bad faith to begin with. 1. Ask a legit question 2. Ban If that is not bad faith...
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  What... you expect someone who is obviously carefully weighing the words they use to reply with "yes, I'm being forced to this! Send help, the boss is evil!!"? No... you wouldn't get answer even it were true. What does it look like under the assumption that there just isn't a grand conspiracy? I. e. the person on Github just isn't the only person working at audacity and is careful not to make promises they can't keep? Then you are just fanning the outrage flames and putting more pressure on someone who has explicitly told you, just now, that they are not in a position to give in to your demands and, less explicitly, that they don't enjoy being put in that situation.
  - antisol 5y ago
    >What... you expect someone who is obviously carefully weighing the words they use to reply with "yes, I'm being forced to this! Send help, the boss is evil!!"? No, I was trying to gauge whether the community agreed with my reading, or if I was being too paranoid in my interpretation. >No... you wouldn't get answer even it were true. Not from the maintainer, but I was asking the community.
  - 5y ago

jmiskovic 5y ago

@antisol You are submitting internet drama you generated to HN. You are using their issue tracker space to call developers scumbags. Looks pretty toxic to me.

antisol 5y ago
look deeper

CountDrewku 5y ago

That's not a legitimate question where an answer was expected. That was a statement formed into a question.

antisol 5y ago
no it was not.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  Stop gaslighting. You know full well what the intention was.
  - antisol 5y ago
    Yeah, I do know what the intention was. And you don't. And how dare you presume to tell me otherwise? Asshole.
    - CountDrewku 5y ago
      I mean your response pretty much proves what sort of character you have and implies that you were doing exactly what I accused you of. Good job.
      - antisol 5y ago
        It absolutely does not. Unless you can claim to have some evidence of what I was thinking. And if you did make that claim, I know for a fact that you would be wrong. You are being a fucking asshole. Good job.
        dang 5y ago
        Yikes! you can't do that here, whatsoever. Please don't post flamewar comments or attack other users on HN. We ban accounts that do that. We're trying for an entirely different kind of conversation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago

There’s a million things to get flustered about on the Internet, but I don’t think this is one of them. Unless I’m confused, like it or not, they don’t owe anyone anything (including a decent/nice response).

antisol 5y ago
>they don’t owe anyone anything unrestricted access to the software. One could make an argument that preventing a user from forking violates the GPL under which the software is licensed.

zenexer 5y ago

The company behind Audacity has been doing some absolutely abhorrent things (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005). These deserve to be pointed out on HN because they are abnormal and unprecedented. This is not one of those things. The person submitting this link to HN posted a snarky rhetorical question—while it made a fair point from my perspective, it certainly wasn’t a constructive comment, and I would’ve been expected to be banned from commenting further if I had done the same. Instead they’re now complaining about it on HN. HN posts like these trivialize the far more insidious actions of Muse Group. They make it seem as though this is just another FOSS infighting drama, which clearly isn’t the case after reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27891005.

antisol 5y ago
I'd love it if people would stop assuming it was a rhetorical question in bad faith. I have addressed this multiple times already. It was not rhetorical.
- zenexer 5y ago
  Nobody is assuming anything. You have presented it as a rhetorical question—work on your presentation if that wasn’t the intention. Nobody said anything about bad faith; in fact, I stated that I agree with the sentiment. What I don’t understand is why you would expect any outcome other than what happened. There’s no need to dramatize something that’s already abhorrent. This particular incident isn’t worthy of its own HN thread. Your own efforts are detrimental to the credibility of the people who are being targeted by Muse Group, as linked above.
  - antisol 5y ago
    >Nobody is assuming anything. "The person submitting this link to HN posted a snarky rhetorical question" is an assumption, and one that I can state categorically and with 100% confidence is incorrect. >You have presented it as a rhetorical question I did not. >work on your presentation if that wasn’t the intention I'm not repeating myself on this again. Go read my comments elsewhere. >Nobody said anything about bad faith You tried to tell me that I had asked a rhetorical question when I did not. That's assuming bad faith. >What I don’t understand is why you would expect any outcome other than what happened Who said that I did? The github issue even mentions my expectations. But I'm sure you read it in its entirety and knew that already. >There’s no need to dramatize something that’s already abhorrent. You're wrong again. By raising the issue on github and then submitting it to HN, at least one more person is aware of it. Which means that I achieved my goal and made the world a better place today. >This particular incident isn’t worthy of its own HN thread. That may or may not be the case, I'm fairly new to HN. I thought it was. I have since re-read the HN rules and I stand by that decision, unless you have a rule that I may have missed that you'd like to point out? >Your own efforts are detrimental to the credibility of the people who are being targeted by Muse Group, as linked above. Not so. As I mentioned, at least one person will be taking a harder look at audacity as a result of this. The impact might not have been as wide as I would have liked, but I did achieve my goal.

coldtea 5y ago

>sound a hell of a lot like a diplomatic way of saying "I have been instructed to add spyware to audacity"? Doesn't sound very constructive. Rude is more like it. How about "to add usage telemetry"?

dkdbejwi383 5y ago

Here's an interesting read on the subject of telemetry in Audacity: https://www.reddit.com/r/audacity/comments/of0b4s/breakdown_of_all_data_collected_by_audacity/ https://www.reddit.com/r/audacity/comments/of0b4s/breakdown_... Telemetry is used for the kind of boring stuff most devs would expect: reporting on exceptions so that bugs can be investigated. As the thread points out, Audacity is still open-source so you can audit the codebase if you'd like. There's certainly no "spyware" code in there that's logging keystrokes or turning on your webcam. I'm sure anyone who develops software understands why it's useful to get logs when your software catches exceptions.

antisol 5y ago
We could get into a huge and involved debate on the purported merits of telemetry. >I'm sure anyone who develops software understands why it's useful to get logs when your software catches exceptions. For example, if we were to get into such a debate, my first question would be "Why does that have to be an automatic process, happening without the users knowledge or consent?" But that's not really what I'm here for. You won't ever convince me that telemetry is a good idea. And you especially won't convince me that it's necessary. I think it's probably not worth the time that it'd take to have that debate. You will not convince me, and I can't be bothered trying to convince you.

em-bee 5y ago

the problem is that it is you who think they act like scumbags, and they themselves don't. by resorting to name calling, regardless of whether it is justified, you are closing the door to any sort of constructive resolution. in https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889#discussioncomment-752594 https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889#discuss... you were not asking a question, but you were making an accusation. again, your concern may be legitimate, the tone in which you voiced it was not constructive. blocking you may be an overreaction, but it is no worse of an overreaction than making accusations and name calling instead of asking an actual question. i don't even know what you are asking there, and what kind of answer you expect from the developers. i mean you are asking if anyone agrees with your interpretation of the lead devs statement. how does that help move the conversation forward? how does it help to resolve the issue? and what response do you expect from the lead dev on that? "yes"? there is no answer that would be satisfactory. if we want to resolve this we, as concerned users, need to voice our concerns in such a way that the developers actually have a chance to make the necessary corrections and regain our trust.

antisol 5y ago
> and they themselves don't You're assuming good faith where it's very clear that none exists. > name calling There's no name calling in there, only factually accurate descriptions. > you are closing the door to any sort of constructive resolution No. Let's be honest here: Muse did that when they blocked me initially. Then they did it again when they failed to answer basic questions put to them by the community. Then they did it again with the threats to the chinese guy. Then I did it once. Then they did it again when they blocked me for raising this issue. > making accusations and name calling instead of asking an actual question. What accusation did I make? I've been over this supposed "name calling" already. I'll refrain from repeating myself. > i don't even know what you are asking there, and what kind of answer you expect from the developers. I've addressed this in my other comments here. I'd suggest you read them if you're actually looking for an answer to this. > i mean you are asking if anyone agrees with your interpretation of the lead devs statement. how does that help move the conversation forward? how does it help to resolve the issue? As I've already explained elsewhere, I was trying to gauge whether my interpretation was too paranoid. I was hoping that maybe the community might say "no, you're just paranoid". Instead the maintainer said in the strongest possible terms that I wasn't being paranoid enough. It helps to move the conversation forward by helping me decide whether I'm just paranoid, and by helping to establish whether there is any hope for the audacity project, or whether a fork is absolutely necessary (turns out it is). All of those data points are useful for resolving the issue. I will grant that perhaps I should have added a "legit question" or something in there since it would appear that most people incorrectly interpreted it as purely rhetorical. But I'd also point out that the reactions from the community are overwhelmingly in agreement with my assessment. > and what response do you expect from the lead dev on that? "yes"? I've answered that elsewhere already, too. See my other comments. > there is no answer that would be satisfactory. Not from the dev. But I wasn't asking them. > if we want to resolve this we, as concerned users, need to voice our concerns in such a way that the developers actually have a chance to make the necessary corrections and regain our trust. Again, you're assuming good faith where it's very clear that none exists. I'd argue that if we want to resolve this we, as concerned users, need to support an audacity fork ASAP. You have clearly not looked into this situation in enough depth. Muse have had and squandered multiple opportunities to regain our trust.

blooalien 5y ago

I just find myself beyond shocked that a dispute over software could devolve to literal death threats, deportation threats, and the level of just general "ass-hattery" this whole thing turned into. It's so far beyond ridiculous that I wouldn't have even believed it without verifying it myself had someone just told me about it rather than having witnessed the insanity of it personally.