Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity
github.com
github.com
The telemetry in Audacity is behind both a build flag, and a runtime opt-in setting (although it was originally going to be opt-out, hence the uproar (I need to go fact-check this, it's been a while)).
So, if you install Audacity through your distro's package manager, you're probably not getting any telemetry, opt-in or otherwise.
With that in mind, I'm not sure I understand why these forks exist exactly. If I was a windows or macOS user, I might be interested in telemetry-free builds, and I'd be very thankful for anyone providing them, but I'm not sure why a whole fork is needed to do that.
Looking at the git tree, it's clear that these forks have diverged significantly from upstream Audacity (simply from looking at commit counts and screenshots etc.), so it's apparently not a simple build-config-change and rebrand. However, the marketing blurb on https://tenacityaudio.org/ does not make it clear which features are distinct from upstream.
Edit: You can read about the telemetry options currently present in Audacity here: https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/
But I can also see why a fork can and should diverge, for those who want a more stable and slow-moving evolution of the software. I hope the Tenacity project succeeds!
As I recall, Tenacity started with some significant reworking of the development toolchain. But I get your point: that's not something end-users normally care about.
Seems pretty reasonable actually. I remember that the situation was more arguable when there were the push backs against the privacy issue, The Muse seems to have responded appropriately to the criticisms.
The community split is unfortunate and sad but I sympathize with people wanting to avoid having to sign a CLA. One of the benefits of contributing to a GPL project without a CLA is that for the project to get rid of the GPL, it has to go out of its way asking for permission to every contributor or to remove the concerned code, which ensure your code does not risk ending up in a future, proprietary version of the project.
The reasons given for the existence of the CLA are reasonable too and I empathize (ability to release under GPLv3 and to release an version in Apple's App store, citing the example of VLC), but the CLA gives way too much right to The Muse which has all the rights to say "thank you, now we will actually make Audacity proprietary". Ideally its scope should be reduced.
The MuseScore 4 release is otherwise awesome (and we must credit them for this!), but they include a non-free (but gratis) optional sound renderer, Muse Sounds, and don't make it very clear they do it (edit: and Muse Hub too, same thing). They also encourage users to save their work in the cloud way too strongly.
I'm not interested in their cloud. I would be interested in Muse Sounds, but there is no way I'm going to start to rely on non-free software today. The whole point of MuseScore, besides it being beginner-friendly, is that's it's free software and Tantacrul sells this aspect very well in its first video about MuseScore by the way.
I actually told them my concerns about Muse Sounds at their FOSDEM stand after they asked me if I saw issues with the new version. Maybe if there are enough voices about this…
I mean... I usually don't like those sorts of things either, but it's literally a window when you click save, before the main dialog, asking whether to save on the computer or their cloud, with a tick box if you want to skip and always save on the computer. Doesn't get much lighter than this, other than not having cloud integration at all... :)
A large part of it is mistrust of Muse, over the initial opt-out nature of the new telemetry and over other past decisions, unrelated to Audacity, that people have found questionable.¹ Fool me once, and all that.
> Looking at the git tree, it's clear that these forks have diverged significantly from upstream Audacity
That in itself would be a reason, certainly from a dev's PoV, on top of that trust thing. If both projects fit what they want, but the downstream ones do it in a way they prefer, that is enough difference even if
> [sic] the marketing does not make clear the difference from upstream
implies that there is no major difference² from an end-users PoV³ at this point.
--
[1] I've not looked into the latter in much detail, my use of Audacity is so infrequent currently that I don't think I've updated (or, obviously, switched to something else) since before the hoo-hah.
[2] Yet, at least.
[3] beyond the telemetry and potential trust issues
Even more, Muse Group (owner of MuseScore and Audacity) is affiliated with Russia and has two offices in Kaliningrad and St.Petersburg, so for security reasons it better to not use those apps.[0]
> Another controversy in July 2021[1] resulted from a change to the privacy policy which said that although personal data was stored on servers in the European Economic Area, the program would "occasionally [be] required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA"[2]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27748261
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/23/audactiy_apology/
That is the definition of a fork.
[1] https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/tree/151d14e349c82...
Apparently, Audacity telemetry is now restricted to a self-hosted Sentry error reporting service, and to sending version info an IP address (anonymized to the first 3 octets) on update checks.
¹ It's a so-called "destructive" audio editor², and so is different than modern, "non-destructive" audio editors like GarageBand, Reaper, Descript, etc.
² https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hks-communications-pro...
this is out of date as of Audacity 3.1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH1CndkiBiU
https://support.audacityteam.org/audio-editing/using-realtim...
I have to say as someone who recently got into this space, the value that these non-destructive editors provide for their price is absurd. Reaper costs a mere one-time payment of $60 for individual use! That's ridiculous for the value you're getting.
It seems to me that 'free upgrades forever' is honestly not a wise idea if you want to develop for your actual users rather than having to constantly try and attract more because any existing user will never pay you again.
So while I'm glad you mentioned the specifics, I don't think the 'Actually,' at the start was really deserved. (plus in general the quality of comments on the internet starting with 'Actually,' is terribad and what followed it in your case came as a welcome and pleasant surprise ;)
Funny you should mention that... Another one of those editors, FL Studio, has exactly that business model. It's not as cheap as a Reaper license, but they do advertise "free upgrades forever" and they're somehow in a good enough position that they bought out both Melda and UVI recently (the latter looks like a pretty big player in the software synth space).
The C-suite philosophy there is that new people are constantly entering both the hobby and business which is...well, entirely correct really. Honestly I'm glad that it's working out for them because it's an incredibly honest way of doing business, even if I don't use their software myself due to a couple long-standing limitations that hopefully they'll address soon.
If your right to use the software expired after some amount of time, then that would be closer to a subscription.
• Adobe Audition is great. Its main drawback is Adobe's rental-only pricing model ($20/month), which kinda stinks unless you need Adobe CC anyway. (macOS/Win)
• If you're on a Mac, many incredibly-popular podcasts have been created with good ol' GarageBand. And if you ever outgrow GarageBand, projects can be "upgraded" to use Logic. (macOS)
• Hindenburg Journalist is unique, in that it's an audio editor designed especially for spoken-word productions. (macOS/Win)
• Presonus Studio One is wonderful and not known about by enough podcasters. There's a free Studio One Prime edition available. (macOS/Win)
• Reaper is an inexpensive and well-liked choice. The discounted license is only $60, but you can “try” it for free as long as you like. (macOS/Win)
I clicked your link, but I'm still unsure what that means. Does that mean it operates on the audio file directly? Or that it has no undo functionality? Or something else entirely?
Similar to photoshop using layers to apply all the changes you've done (so you can undo particular ones easily/turn them on/off) and doing everything in the "flat" image space.
Or using git to track a file's changes vs just editing the file directly.
And adjustment layers, right? And let's not forget that Photoshop also includes Camera Raw which is totally non-destructive and saves all changes in XMP (which is interchangeable with Lightroom).
With a nondestructive editor you can remove a change done several steps ago AND keep all of the changes done afterwards.
DAWs (digital audio workstations) edit by using metadata. Suppose you have an audio file that is 2 minutes long. You start using it in the application. The application notes "we have 2 minutes of audio, taken from the start of this file". Now if you "delete" the last minute of the file, nothing is done to the file, but the "metadata" inside the DAW now says "we have 1 minute of audio, taken from the start of this file".
If you then copy 20 seconds from the middle of that section, the DAW refers to this with metadata essentially saying "20 seconds of audio starting 20 seconds into this file".
Nothing is ever done to change the contents of the actual file.
ps. I write a DAW for a living.
Edit a WAV or JPEG with either of those and they'll dutifully not touch the source file (unless/until you tell them to export on top of it) despite internally operating directly on the data. (I think both have moved and are moving to offer more nondestructive modes of operation, but speaking of their legacy setups, anyway).
This feels like semantics. No self-respecting DAW will overwrite your source files, but the DAW's project file is, technically, an audio file. And here's a 30-second video file:
A = BlankClip()
B = A.Subtitle("Hello, world!")
Dissolve(A, B, 30)
You're using "audio file" in a domain-specific way. The common meaning of "audio file" is "a file that contains audio": a .aup file is an audio file, just the same as a GarageBand project is, to a room full of 14-year-old amateur musicians.
Regardless, seems I'm the one with the uncommon use of language, here.
This appears to be the Tenacity referenced:
If I want to help the developers debug their app for free I will decide on my own when and how to do that.
I consider any breach of these desires to be ideologically repugnant and indicative of an extreme disrespect for users of your app.
You say this like you pay for the app. Audacity is free.
Are the documents made by a word processor really mine when the word processor collects my input and saves it to disk?
No, in reality, you have a company that bought the branding of a piece of free software. They didn't make Audacity. They contributed to versions 3.0 through 3.2.1 (which I've, personally, never used). They had nothing to do with the award-winning version 1.3.x, nor anything up to 2.4.2.
I'm not against companies taking on the maintenance of free software projects – provided it's not an Embrace Extend Extinguish ruse –, but throwing money around wouldn't entitle one to claim credit. (I'm not aware of Muse Group claiming credit for Audacity, but if anyone is pulling a stunt like that, I would like to write them a strongly-worded letter.)
And don't forget this company initially tried to ship telemetry-by-default in this software before there was backlash. They retreated to a reasonable compromise, but in no way are they entitled to a single byte of my data. I owe them nothing. I did not compel them to "provide me an app for free," not only because that app existed long before they bought its branding, but also because I had no voice in their licensing policy.
If they want to amend their license to require telemetry, they may do so, and I will stop using the software. But never, ever, as long as I live, will I owe them shit.
nobody is forcing you to use it, but you could still ask a refund as the free program that nobody forced you to use has added something that you don't agree with.
If the point you're trying to make is that I don't have to use the software, I already knew that, but thanks.
If the point you're trying to make is that I'm not entitled to opinions on the matter because I didn't pay anyone for the software, that's horse shit.
You can't trust devs that have such bad judgement that they would even think about doing it opt-out with the opt-in data either.
So it will be tied to a unique identifier.
> Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.
from https://gdpr.eu/recital-30-online-identifiers-for-profiling-...
Further support for this interpretation in case the above comes off as "only if combined with other data": https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...
I do think it makes your statement that cannot, "be linked back to you personally", a little less absolute.
My take: An IP address is usually not, in fact almost always not, PII on its own, but there are circumstances where it is part of a package of data that is PII, and others where it could be considered “circumstantial PII”.