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Audacity Is Spying On You Now


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13 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Got a little clever with my comment on his video. Hopefully it's obvious without being too obvious?

 

If not, check the first letter of each sentence.

 

Let's see how long until he notices and deletes it in a huff.

He'd probably have the audacity to remove your comment

 

...I'll see myself out

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Anyone who uses the GPLv3, email a random Free Software Foundation representative and ask them to create the GPLv4 to prohibit all adware, spyware & potentially unwanted programs from being bundled with all open-source software, and to prohibit all internet HTML-inspired privacy features from non-web browser software.

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11 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Anyone who uses the GPLv3, email a random Free Software Foundation representative and ask them to create the GPLv4 to prohibit all adware, spyware & potentially unwanted programs from being bundled with all open-source software, and to prohibit all internet HTML-inspired privacy features from non-web browser software.

You already said that above, no need to repeat it. And then, how exactly would you define potentially unwanted programs and such? It would open the door for abuse.

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@Wadmodder Shalton I don't know if that can be applied retroactively to something already released with the older licenses. Maybe with a branch, assuming the original author has control over it and would desire something like that. If he's into the spyware scheme however, good luck with that. Maybe someone may wrestle a separate development branch off him and mark it with the new license...dunno, complex legal mumbo jumbo.

 

Also, if the spyware itself is open source/seen plainly in the repository, it'll still be A-OK since "anybody can modify it and release derivative works".|If it's tacked-on as part of a non-transparent process in some specific distribution...well, nothing you can do to stop that, other than not using said specific distribution.

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1 hour ago, deus-ex said:

 

That is correct for v3.0.2. Audacity v3.0.3, which is currently available as a release candidate, has telemetry functionality included, as one can notice by the additional files added to the distribution.

 

According to my Firewall, my user application report, and checking through Audacity's saved settings it has not yet tried to open a network connection and no trails can be found of any gathered data. That might change though once v3.0.3 gets released. Nothing a Firewall rule can't handle.


Yeah I have already updated to 3.0.2 and do not plan on updating to 3.0.3 when it is fully release. I also blocked all out and inbound connections for it through Windows Firewall. I don't think they've re-added the the spyware yet. They've just updated the privacy policy so far.

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Thanks for the heads up @Biodegradable, sad to see this happen to such a foundational piece of free software :/
 

 

3 hours ago, leejacksonaudio said:

For those looking for a basic (if non-free) editor alternative, I would suggest Wavepad

Just grabbed the unlicensed version, this is pretty sweet, might consider using this even if I end up grabbing an older build of audacity.
On a side-note, you got any hot leads on some synth vsts? I've been digging a bit more outside the realm of my typical Juno-clone bubble and figure you might know some good stuff.

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24 minutes ago, Wavy said:

He'd probably have the audacity to remove your comment

 

...I'll see myself out

Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split you.

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52 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Anyone who uses the GPLv3, email a random Free Software Foundation representative and ask them to create the GPLv4 to prohibit all adware, spyware & potentially unwanted programs from being bundled with all open-source software, and to prohibit all internet HTML-inspired privacy features from non-web browser software.

 

You are overreacting hard here over one program going bad.

 

The GPL is already doing its job. There's gonna be a ton of forks with this nonsense removed, it's already happening as we speak. This would just make the license more needlessly complicated than it already is.

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1 hour ago, kwc said:

On a side-note, you got any hot leads on some synth vsts? I've been digging a bit more outside the realm of my typical Juno-clone bubble and figure you might know some good stuff.

Here's some free vst synths: https://www.fullbucket.de/music/vst.html

Here's the vst motherload: https://www.kvraudio.com

Enjoy with your favorite beverage. :)

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They definitely need to do better about getting in front of these issues instead of letting people react to them.  It seems to me that all the scary language is just all the fun legalese that comes with "our program checks to see if we released a new version."  Of course I also think people over react to the concept of app telemetry as well.  I mean I can certainly get behind the feeling that Audacity is not a program that needs these things, but it's weird to me how fast people jump to the conclusion that this is all part of a scheme to make money selling data, or rat out people to the government.  As if they don't realize that people can just remove/disable this stuff easily given that it's open source.  It could also be, you know, software engineers wanting to get a clearer picture of what's important to users without the heavy biases that asking users manually gives.

 

If we're going to jump to being conspiratorial, then isn't it a little weird that in the fall out from all of this certain people are coming in with suggestions of closed source software that can be used instead.  Software which can't be easily verified doesn't have telemetry? :P  (Not poking at Lee Jackson here, I've seen similar suggestions in other places where this change is being discussed.)

 

I guess change my mind?

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Guys, it's much worse than you think. It got bought by WSM Group, the owners of Ultimate Guitar (and anyone familiar with UG now realizes how bad it actually is) - the sketchiest tab site on the interwebs. In 2000s there was this site called mysongbook that had an enormous amount of guitar pro files. As was the norm, the bright minds at record labels decided that tabs were piracy, and they killed it. So now instead of a decent tab site we have this sketchy as hell Russian for-profit site that has zero issues hosting actual copyrighted tabs (like actual commercial guitar pro files) and also profit from that.

 

But the good news is that Audacity is open source, so it'll be forked and everything might be fine. The bad news is that it's open source, so it'll be forked, and forked, and forked, and forked... basically, it can fracture too much. No way of knowing at this point.

 

Audacity isn't that great though. Reaper is technically commercial, but in practice it's a fully featured nagware, so just use that. Way more powerful (which can also be a problem though).

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2 hours ago, Blzut3 said:

They definitely need to do better about getting in front of these issues instead of letting people react to them.  It seems to me that all the scary language is just all the fun legalese that comes with "our program checks to see if we released a new version."  Of course I also think people over react to the concept of app telemetry as well.  I mean I can certainly get behind the feeling that Audacity is not a program that needs these things, but it's weird to me how fast people jump to the conclusion that this is all part of a scheme to make money selling data, or rat out people to the government.

 

[insert cheap GZDoom telemetry joke here]

This is true in general (Firefox gets this kind of overreaction all of the time, same when GZDoom had its survey) but in this case the quoted portion literally says they're giving your information to potential buyers (selling data) and law enforcement (government).

 

Quote

If we're going to jump to being conspiratorial, then isn't it a little weird that in the fall out from all of this certain people are coming in with suggestions of closed source software that can be used instead.  Software which can't be easily verified doesn't have telemetry? :P  (Not poking at Lee Jackson here, I've seen similar suggestions in other places where this change is being discussed.)

Thanks for pointing this out though. To continue the analogy, that's like boycotting Firefox because of telemetry then switching to fucking Google Chrome instead lmao.

 

1 hour ago, dianghong said:

Audacity isn't that great though. Reaper is technically commercial, but in practice it's a fully featured nagware, so just use that. Way more powerful (which can also be a problem though).

Well for one, like mentioned before, Reaper is proprietary so no one who is actually boycotting Audacity over this is going to flock to that instead, because being open-source was part of the appeal.

The other thing though is that Reaper is a fully-featured DAW for music production. Audacity is not a DAW, it is just a sound editor, and very simple to use. Completely different use-cases.

 

Anyway, since the program is open source, just wait a short while until whatever becomes the most popular community fork starts being distributed. There is no need to be alarmist!

Edited by TheMightyHeracross

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16 minutes ago, Blzut3 said:

(Not poking at Lee Jackson here, I've seen similar suggestions in other places where this change is being discussed.)

No offense taken. I was just trying to be helpful by suggesting a program I use myself.

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Blah. I liked it because it was basically a free version of Goldwave I didn't have to pirate.

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1 minute ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

but in this case the quoted portion literally says they're giving your information to potential buyers (selling data) and law enforcement (government).

It doesn't literally say that, point 4 is saying if they're acquired they can give the data to the acquiring company which makes sense.  The last point says "if you have provided your prior consent."  I'm not a lawyer so I can't say why that point even needs to be there.  Their clarification posted on GitHub today says they're not going to sell data to 3rd parties "full stop," so I don't think my interpretation of the last point is out of line.

 

As for the government, I recognize why people hate seeing this, but ultimately expect this kind of clause from anyone that isn't running a VPN service.  Most people are going to comply with any government order served to them since it's not going to be worth it to them to pay the expense (be it monetary or jail time) of fighting it.  That is just a fact of life being spelled out in legalese.

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I never used it to begin with. Definitely won't be using it now - definitely not the 'official' fork, at least...

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Well that's some bullshit.  Audacity is the only audio-editing tool I've ever used.

I have version 2.2.2 of Audacity.  Can I continue using it if I don't update or do I need to find another program to edit audio now?

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I have produced all 6 of my albums in Audacity, this hurts my soul!

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8 minutes ago, Orcsbreath said:

Well that's some bullshit.  Audacity is the only audio-editing tool I've ever used.

I have version 2.2.2 of Audacity.  Can I continue using it if I don't update or do I need to find another program to edit audio now?

 

Versions 3.0.2 and earlier should be good.

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9 hours ago, Doom_Dude said:

Ugh this sucks. I'll be keeping my olde 2.4.2 version. Not sure when I last updated but it's been ages (2018 I think).

 

Yep, i will do the same, have 2.2.2. here at the Moment and i don't see why i should update.
It is a small and nice Program and i love it for don't beeing to much of everything.

Maybe we'll se a Fork some Day.

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UPDATE:

 

762eb914c0.png

 

Hopefully my comment doesn't wind up deleted from this guy. I THINK he gets what I'm doing, but it's entirely possible it flew over his head.

 

Of course, if it did, my comment will likely stand if he thinks it's just a normal praise post.

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