Telemetry tracking coming to an audio editor near you!
Their decision is official.
(Not hot-linking to PR in question on purpose)
> We're closing this PR. We've taken on board 'no Google' and 'no Yandex' and Muse are now looking for a good alternative (thanks to those who recommended other open source solutions by the way). Please understand that this will take a little time to organize and a concrete plan will be published soon - at any rate this week.
@falktx it seems it is disabled by default, opt in optional, and if enabled, only used to gather data to help app development. If that's true, I have no problem with that. Just keep it turned off.
But worth to keep an eye on what changes.
@ilvipero that is fair and some are ok with it, sure.
I am personally against it, I think analytics is the first step for many bad things. What is acceptable today would be unthinkable just a few years ago. All driven by corporations and/or profits, Audacity had no tracking of any kind for its 20 year lifetime.
And anyway a network layer has no place in an offline audio editor.
@falktx I understand and value different point of view. Certainly it was not the best start. First change made to a foss software after it got acquired , was to introduce telemetry. At least it is disabled by default. Good thing is, now audacity got a lot of eyes on it, and if new owners try something sneaky it will most likely result in backlash and possibly a fork.
@falktx Well, I think this is the best outcome we realistically could have hoped for... I would be very surprised if they decided to drop the idea entirely.
@unfa tantacrul mentioned this morning that muse group is the one pushing for analytics, that it is a requirement for their products.
So a fork will take place for sure.
I began doing some tests for building audacity here, will continue more today.
@jaxter184 @falktx @unfa They were "created" in Cyprus recently but I was not able to find any corporate filings for "Muse Group" so I question how shady this group is if they just mysteriously appear out of thin air and now they "own" Audacity.
@falktx It seems I was mistaken thinking Tantacrul owns the company then. I should post a correction under my livestream.
@unfa yes indeed, we do not want to be the ones spreading misinformation. on the upside, I got win32 and win64 builds of audacity building already. submitted the relevant mingw fixes upstream in a PR.
Will take care of macos builds soon.
So we are ready for the worst-case scenario.
@falktx Thank you. I hope Windows users will not have to do this (and I am afraid our range will be very small) but if need be - I'm gonna spread the word about these "de-telemetrized" builds from you.
@falktx
I don't mind as long as it is opt-in and not using Google
@falktx keep up the good fight against the bastards who'll extract every ounce of good will and work by the community and see who they can sell it to