Audacity is now a Possible Spyware

[Beerislife]

The famous open source audio manipulation program was acquired by a company named Muse Group two months ago.

The parent company is a multi-national company and it has been trying to start a data-collection mechanism in the software. While Audacity is nothing more than a desktop program, its developers want to make it phone home with various data taken from users? machines.

https://fosspost.org/audacity-is-now-a-spyware/

[jlittle]

Bugger. I fired it up only a couple of days ago. Here's hoping for a fork.

[jglen490]

The current Audacity in the Kubuntu 20.04 repo, according to Synaptic, is 2.3.3. Assume that's still good?

[GreyGeek]

The current Audacity in the Kubuntu 20.04 repo, according to Synaptic, is 2.3.3. Assume that's still good?

It is. And I have locked that version until such time as a suitable replacement is available.

It amazes me that some corporate folks feel so entitled that they think they can browse around your file structure and collect what ever info they want, and, the right to report it to legal agencies. For Americans that is a basic rejection of the 4th Amendment.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Some will say that it is not the gov that is doing the snooping and seizing, BUT, the gov is a direct beneficiary, which makes them a party to the crime and culpable. During the heydays of fascist Italy industries were broken into employer and employee units which together formed the councils which controlled the corporations. The councils of the 22 corporations were supervised by the Central Committee for Corporations of the government, which became the Ministry of Corporations which, after 1926, had the final authority on all actions taken by councils. In today's world people are controlled by controlling their access to information. This is happening not only in China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, etc., but supposedly "free" democracies like the US, UK, EU, AU, NZ, FR, etc...
You know "news" is being manipulated when the WH spokesperson states without laughing that the Republicans want to defund the police, and none of the media wonks call her on it.

[Bings]

1. Minors
   1. The App we provide is not intended for individuals below the age of 13. If you are under 13 years old, please do not use the App.

Probably the saddest part.

[chimak111]

Just for fun, someone could try to make an AppImage of the 20.04 repo version. I could make AppImages of gcolor2 and leafpad, but amarok was too difficult, not just for me but for someone else as well.

[GreyGeek]

Probably the saddest part.

Not only sad, it is a violation of the GPL under which Audacity was released. There is no age restriction in the GPL.

[chimak111]

Bugger. I fired it up only a couple of days ago. Here's hoping for a fork.

Audacity fork maintainer quits after alleged harassment by 4chan losers who took issue with 'Tenacity' name

[Bings]

This continued, they decided amongst themselves that the age limit wasn't needed afterall amongst other things https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/1353

but this isn't the only controversy these people are getting involved in https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021...rce-community/

[GreyGeek]

I saw this a couple weeks ago, posted about it, and locked my version so it can't be updated.

[GreyGeek]

The issue with Audacity has been cleared up. All is well.
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889

[MoonRise]

I hope it is.