Audacity's team is censoring legitimate questions
github.com
github.com
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!
That's like saying Nazi's were a bit naughty. Or that inside of an active star is lukewarm.
It's an outright lie. If anything GP was very temperate in their response.
For example, if you work for musescore... ;)
To make it clear, this would be them not you :-)
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.
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.
"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.
The fork was the right decision.
Why be so tone-deaf or intellectually dishonest.
Are you saying that I wasn't legitimately asking a question?
Because I was. The note about that is 100% factually accurate.
1. Ask a legit question 2. Ban
If that is not bad faith...
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.
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.
You have the moral obligation to cater for the community as you didn't just buy the project but you also inherited the community.
Unless I’m confused, like it or not, they don’t owe anyone anything (including a decent/nice response).
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.
in 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.
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.
if you want to work towards any resolution you must always assume good faith, otherwise why even bother talking to them.
There's no name calling in there, only factually accurate descriptions.
scumbag is name calling. whether it's justified is irrelevant. again, you must always assume good faith, otherwise there is no point in interacting at all.
> 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.
before that you accused them of including spyware. that's where you closed the door to a constructive response. yes, you were asking the community if they agree with that interpretation. but you asked it in front of the core developers. not the right place for that question. and it wasn't clear enough that that was your question.
> 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.
yes, saw that. clear now. i wasn't able to see that from your initial message.
But I'd also point out that the reactions from the community are overwhelmingly in agreement with my assessment.
that doesn't excuse the tone. and that is not just addressed to you but to everyone who is just yelling at the developers instead of constructively pointing out the errors of their ways.
> 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.
then do that and be done with it. if there is no point in talking to the original developers then why do it? especially in that tone?
the civil thing would have been to just go with one of the forks and make statements like: "i supporting this fork because i disagree with the direction of development in audacity. the fork is removing any telemetry and related features because those are not welcome" there. end of story. nothing else is needed to add.
You have clearly not looked into this situation in enough depth. Muse have had and squandered multiple opportunities to regain our trust.
i am not disputing any of the accusations made against them. i take issue with the form and the tone in which those accusations are being made.
if you want the developers and owners of audacity to listen, then walk away from their project, and make it clear that they are loosing their userbase. but don't yell at them. that's not helping. i would not listen to that. and i don't expect them to listen to that either.
>if you want to work towards any resolution you must always assume good faith, otherwise why even bother talking to them.
I've covered this in other comments and I'm tired of repeating myself. If you're not just asking this rhetorically, you can find the answer easily.
>scumbag is name calling.
No. I don't accept that in this case. I maintain that it's purely descriptive. See my comments elsewhere.
>before that you accused them of including spyware
I did not. The question was a hypothetical. I opined that it sounded like that to me, and asked if this was the consensus or not.
Further, even if you do read it as an accusation, the use of the term "spyware" is obviously hyperbolic and not intended to be taken literally.
>that's where you closed the door to a constructive response
Actually, they had previously closed the door to a constructive response when they failed to respond to a horde of other questions. Questions which still remain unanswered.
I could go and do your research for you to show you the history and when this happened, but I can't be bothered. The history is all there if you care to be properly informed.
>but you asked it in front of the core developers
...who should have the ability to accept public scrutiny if they're going to run a public project.
>not the right place for that question
What, pray tell, was the right place? And what "reasonable" response do you think would have been likely from the scumbags?
>and it wasn't clear enough that that was your question.
I have acknowledged elsewhere that this does indeed appear to be the case.
>yes, saw that. clear now. i wasn't able to see that from your initial message.
Cool. Yeah, I didn't initially elaborate on my motivations. Didn't occur to me.
>that doesn't excuse the tone. and that is not just addressed to you but to everyone who is just yelling at the developers instead of constructively pointing out the errors of their ways.
When you constructively point out the error of their ways, you get a bunch of reactions from the community agreeing with your post, and then you are are ignored without any comment from the maintainers...
...If you're lucky: Sometimes high level muse representatives chime in to sarcastically accuse you of posting copypasta.
I could go and do your research for you to show you the history and when this happened, but I can't be bothered. The history is all there if you care to be properly informed.
>then do that and be done with it.
I've already done it. Did it before posting my github issue.
>if there is no point in talking to the original developers then why do it? especially in that tone?
I've covered this in other comments and I'm tired of repeating myself. If you're not just asking this rhetorically, you can find the answer easily.
>the civil thing... (bla bla bla)
That would not have achieved my goal. This did. To see what my goal was, go read my other comments. Covered elsewhere, tired of repeating myself, bla bla bla ;)
>i take issue with the form and the tone in which those accusations are being made.
You have clearly not looked into this situation in enough depth.
>if you want the developers and owners of audacity to listen, then walk away from their project, and make it clear that they are loosing their userbase. but don't yell at them. that's not helping. i would not listen to that. and i don't expect them to listen to that either.
Firstly, I hate to be the grammar nazi, but it's "losing". "loosing" is a pet peeve of mine and I simply. couldn't. resist. Sorry!
if you want the developers and owners of audacity to listen
That wasn't my goal. I knew there was no chance of that. Covered elsewhere, tired of repeating myself, bla bla.
but don't yell at them. that's not helping
It did.
i would not listen to that.
That wasn't my goal. Covered elsewhere, tired of repeating myself, bla bla.
>and i don't expect them to listen to that either.
Scumbags need to be called scumbags. But that's a whole philosophical debate that I really just can't even be bothered with. If you disagree, then that's nice and I commend your altruism. But you're wrong :P ;)
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.
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
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=990737
Doesn't sound very constructive. Rude is more like it.
How about "to add usage telemetry"?