The Audacity novel continues. Two forks appeared

The Audacity novel

It was a matter of time for the decisionn of the new Audacity owners of include optional telemetry in your application may decide some developers to create alternatives. And, less than a week after the Muse Group announced its new privacy policy, there are already at least two in place.

I do not want to be a bird of ill omen, I stop except LibreOffice, the Mate desktop (And possibly Rocky Linux is added) there are few cases of bifurcated projects that capitalize on discontent. Users network a bit and then forget, while forks fade into obscurity.

The Audacity novel What's wrong with telemetry?

Carlos is an amateur musician and lover of open source. After venting on the networks for the decision to include telemetry in Audacity, he called an Uber and went to get the Covid vaccine. As they warned him that he could have a little fever, he went to the pharmacy and bought Paracetamol from a well-known laboratory and a Coca Cola to lower it. He paid for everything with his credit card.
As there was a subway station near the pharmacy, she decided to take advantage of some of the trips that were left over from her monthly pass.

Of all these activities, records remained, records that were sent to companies responsible for analyzing them and that will use them to draw conclusions.

I clarify, there is no such Carlos, except that we are all a little. It is impossible to live with a modicum of comfort in modern life without leaving traces. So it's worth wondering if we're not over-acting outrage.

I'm not sure of the answer. Why does the developer of a program that doesn't connect to the Internet want my IP address? Why do you put an age restriction? However, they have already clarified that the telemetry tool is optional, and probably those responsible for the different distributions do not include it when creating the packages.

Of course, there is also the issue of the violation of the GPL license. But that came after the telemetry complaints.

Two new forks

We have to clarify that neither of the two programs that we discussed are ready for use in tasks that require stability. In fact, you have to compile the source code.

There are also no news, except perhaps in the visual aspect.

tenacity

At Lóleo Eventos, page from GitHub describe it as a multitrack audio editor / recorder for Windows, MacOS, GNU / Linux and other operating systems, dIt is developed by a group of volunteers as open source software.

Some features:

  • Recording from audio devices (real or virtual).
  • Export / import of a wide range of audio formats (expandable with FFmpeg).
  • High quality, including up to 32-bit floating audio support.
  • Plug-ins with support for VST, LV2 and AU plugins.
  • Scripting in the built-in Nyquist scripting language, or in Python, Perl, and other languages.
  • Arbitrary sampling and multitrack timeline editing.
  • Accessibility, including keyboard editing, screen reader support, and narration support.
  • Useful tools for signal analysis, including audio.

audacium

The description of this project, powered by a free software support organization, is exactly the same as Tenacity. I suppose it was taken from the Audacity one. However, they took the trouble to specify what their goals are

The goals that Audacium tries to achieve are quite simple:

  • Restore Audacity to what it was before, with no crash reports (GH Issues exists for that), or a very simple update check (only at startup, not periodically).
  • Add new features that people want, listening carefully to the community.
  • Make the code base easier to work with, less confusing for a newbie.

I hope the developers of both projects have the common sense to merge efforts And let's not end up like so many times happens with so many open source projects. An infinite amount of forks that, when added together, do not become a fairly usable application.


5 comments, leave yours

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  1.   Miguel Rodriguez said

    The question is not so much if they work on the same project so that it lives up to the original, but if at least they have not done it on a whim and end up abandoning it, what those developers need is to get advertising, I hope they make use of media like medium, quora, reddit and 4chan to attract people who not only want to collaborate but also use the fork.

  2.   Lime Taylor said

    The paranoid who believe they are mastersprohackers, who think they are Edward Snowden, although the reality is that they are NOBODY, NOBODY of importance for companies (just to swallow advertising and buy products) and not to mention for governments, that they are not NOBODY of interest, and NOBODY who needs to be watched.

    The only people who really fear telemetry are people like the one mentioned above, Edward Snowden, hacktivists, political activists and journalists.
    And still, I highly doubt that mastersprohackers use Audacity. HAHA.
    There is the majority of the toxic Linux community! : c
    They are believed to be so important when they barely know how to install a distribution or use a terminal, but doing masters in Computer Security, 99% do not know anything. HAHA.

  3.   dhouard said

    I suppose you know the metaphor of the bridge that a train passed through every day. Every day they changed a piece and after a while, the whole bridge was new and the travelers who passed by there every day did not even notice.

    The same goes for these things; we give in a little bit each time because "they won't spy on me", "that's only for hackers" until it affects us.

    It is not only what a developer can do with my data, it is to let them gradually eat away at us and we have not even kicked for it.

    1.    Liam taylor said

      In case you didn't know, oh great activist / hacktivist persecuted by the NSA! the software requires the use of telemetry.
      You are nobody, and I am nobody. Make it clear to them that governments do not need to monitor (individually) their activities, because that is already done by large algorithms that classify and search for possible threats to national security.
      They believe they are really important, they think that their data is of high importance of the "top secret" type, when governments do not care and companies want to earn and earn a lot of money, making them swallow all the possible publicity, so that they buy their products or services.
      Get off that little trunk in which you think you are, I already did.

      I was that paranoid about my data, because yeah, that's what they are, alarmist and paranoid. I thought the world revolved around me, just like all the alarmists-paranoids on the subject of telemetry, including you.
      There I was using software, not because it was the best, but because it "offers more privacy", even though the software was incredibly inferior in terms of features to its competition.

      The answer is: if you are not a hacker, you are not a political activist, you are not a hactivist, you are not a persecuted journalist, if you do not live in an authoritarian country ... Why should you be afraid of telemetry? Are you at risk of dying? Are you at risk of being thrown in jail?
      Or are you afraid that they will see [that ...]?

      I use Linux because I like it, not because I am afraid of the evil Microsoft.
      On top of that, the telemetric data is used to improve the software, but of course the toxic Linux community always sucking if they give anything in return like leeches.

      1.    spy said

        You have no idea what some company uses telemetry for. And what for it will use it tomorrow