[HN Gopher] Audacity: Clarification of Privacy Policy
___________________________________________________________________
Audacity: Clarification of Privacy Policy
Author : anonymousab
Score : 103 points
Date : 2021-07-05 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| theden wrote:
| Pretty laughable they have to post even more walls of text to
| convince folks that it's okay for an _offline_ application to spy
| on you. Frankly, this would have probably been tolerated or
| largely ignored if there wasn't a long history of Audacity not
| doing this and for the most part working well.
|
| Time to either move to hard fork (if it happens) or find an
| alternative IMO, they can choose to die on this hill.
|
| We're already tracked by so many apps (and at the OS-level for
| many) I think a lot of people are pushing back hard (maybe
| unfairly) because it's something they can control since it's
| FOSS.
|
| Audacity has been around for over 20 years! It's takes some
| serious ego to drop in CLAs and telemetry on the community months
| after acquiring it.
| jitl wrote:
| Telemetry and error reporting are opt-in. Error reporting uses
| industry-standard Sentry (also an OSS), which is not a
| nefarious data seller. Auto-update checked are opt-count and
| send a very basic user-agent with less data than an average web
| browser HTTP request. There is no spying here.
| theden wrote:
| Yeah maybe by modern software which doesn't respect the
| user's privacy and resource usage it's nothing to worry
| about.
|
| I'd say this is a regression, and adding all that networking
| code makes it easier for them to push it further down the
| line, and adds more vectors for attacks.
|
| At best it's bloat. Developers were able to write good
| software without pulling in user's data before, it says more
| about the devs if they think it's so necessary.
|
| Okay say it's not spying--you now have another app on your
| system pinging hosts, and depending on how much you trust
| Muse, you have to check the changelog every time to ensure
| they haven't added more bloat or juiced up the telemetry.
|
| I'd posit that spying has been normalised we don't even
| recognise it anymore. Opt-in isn't a get out of jail free
| card, since your avg user will just click whatever.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I'm sorry I really don't get the privacy issue here. It
| automatically checks for updates, most apps do, and in
| doing so it appears in the logs for a webserver (and I'm
| pretty sure most sysadmins want to retain access and error
| logs)
|
| The error reporting is by an open-source tool and is opt-
| in.
| noobermin wrote:
| Can't you just turn off auto update and not get this?
|
| FFS, any time you connect to a website they know your IP
| address. A log will save it, perhaps, and they say they
| prune their logs after 24 hours which is reasonable.
|
| Literally wget sends this sort of info, you can try it
| wget -d example.com
|
| unless now wget is spyware too. This whole thing is a
| nothingburger at best and just a pr disaster at worst.
| theden wrote:
| You're comparing web tools/browsers to an offline audio
| editor.
|
| Though I agree it's a PR disaster--people are upset, I
| don't think folks can be reasoned with since it's partly
| a backlash of yet another small community being taken
| over by corporate mediocrity.
| noobermin wrote:
| People are not getting the point. If you have to
| _download the software_ they will get this info, full
| stop. There is no way that they won 't get your user
| agent. That's what this privacy policy refers to. Same if
| you download auto-updates, you have to download the
| updates from the internet which requires connecting to
| their webserver, and they'll get this information.
|
| As for the telemetry, that's opt-in. May be the bloat and
| other things that are being mentioned are about that? But
| for the first two bullets on information that is
| mentioned as collected (IP addr and os info) that is
| mentioned in the linked github discussion, they are
| literally what they will get because you had to visit
| their site to download it or because you automatically
| download updates.
| userbinator wrote:
| Microsoft popularised telemetry in otherwise-offline applications
| with Windows 10. Now every other trendchasing company thinks they
| should do it too.
|
| They always claim it improves software, but all that seems to
| happen is it just gets dumbed down and features removed, making
| it worse for experienced/power users.
| noobermin wrote:
| This isn't telemetry though.
| miles wrote:
| CoasterGhost has uploaded[1] 31 versions of Audacity and Github
| source code for 18 versions to archive.org[2] for posterity.
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/oe2opu/due_to_...
|
| [2] https://archive.org/details/AudacityArchive
| nxpnsv wrote:
| But, why do they need to store IP-address at all? It don't see
| what good it can do.
| deadbunny wrote:
| I would assume it's from webserver logs. I could of course be
| wrong.
| noobermin wrote:
| They reference GDPR so that's exactly why they mention it.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Logs, maybe abuse protection? For better or worse, the
| musescore-downloader affair has probably made them a bit
| pensive and defensive around potential abuse from clients.
|
| They may also simply think that it's just plainly required if
| they're going to run an online service that the app connects to
| by default.
|
| That's all speculation though, hopefully they'll answer that
| question on the GitHub discussion.
| undfg wrote:
| This reminds me of the freenode debacle. The problem is not that
| audacity was purchased, the problem is that it was sold.
| arkitaip wrote:
| I get the feeling that the community has had enough of the
| corporate shenanigans, that a proper fork is about to go alive
| any day now.
| yoyomamamama wrote:
| Audacity is over as soon as a fork gets some momentum.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| depends on someone actually paying the developers because I
| don't think development is community driven but done by Muse.
|
| People need to keep in mind that open source software doesn't
| automatically develop itself just because you can fork the
| code. Audacity is a pretty big, complicated piece of software.
| akersten wrote:
| This is now the 2nd "clarification" that Muse group, the new team
| in charge of Audacity, has recently put out - the first one being
| here[0]. At this point, it's clear that they are taking the
| product in an unpopular direction. So why keep pushing an online-
| first privacy policy and telemetry? Certainly it is not one of
| the pressing needs of the core product.
|
| Honestly, it will take some convincing to make me think this _isn
| 't_ nefarious at this point. At a minimum, the community is not
| being listened to, just placated.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/880
| rStar wrote:
| when this happens the product dies. in my mind it's as if
| audacity never existed. hopefully a project emerges from a
| forked code base that's useable going forward.
| zxzax wrote:
| I'm not sure why the word "fork" is being repeatedly
| mentioned or why people are thinking this is making the code
| unusable. At most, I would expect a patched distribution
| similar to VSCodium to pop up, i.e. not a hard fork. If there
| was willpower in the community to fork the project and fix
| all the other long standing issues, that would have happened
| already, so there is no reason to expect a fork here.
| xtracto wrote:
| I dont understand all the ruckus around this. Just fork the
| repo and remove the spying code (I dont want an audio editor to
| share my CPU and IP with anyone).
|
| It has been done for larger codebases like OpenOffice and
| MySql.
| tlackemann wrote:
| I don't understand the pettiness around this issue.
|
| Audacity needed a maintainer to help with support and
| development. Developer, who has a pretty active YouTube channel
| covering design in music software, takes interest and leads the
| project. Said developer adds telemetry to help make more informed
| decisions. People lose their collective minds.
|
| Can someone fill me in on what this person could have done
| better? Honestly, it seems like pearl-clutching from a select
| group of users who never gave a shit in the first place and just
| want to whine about something they never contributed to and get
| to use for free.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| How about just asking people for their opinion instead of
| trying to somehow conclude on usage patterns and stuff from
| telemetry data, which is not opt-in, but opt-out, which is
| quite sneaky in itself?
|
| "Just ask those people!" Is what I think every single time,
| when this kind of issue pops up. Ask the people what they find
| annoying about the product, ask them what they like. There are
| many questions you can ask and which yield a much more direct
| result than telemetry data, without upsetting a community and
| without coming across as sneaky and disrespectful of user
| privacy.
| blooalien wrote:
| Exactly! And if you really _need_ any sort of "telemetry" to
| get the data that you need, then do what so many other FOSS
| software I've seen with any sort of "phone home features"
| does, and simply _ask_ the user during the first run if it 's
| okay to send <such and such data> for development purposes.
| (Also, a toggle in the preferences is always nice, too, so
| that I can enable such a feature on days I'm feeling
| particularly helpful, and still easily disable it on days I'm
| feeling like there's no need for my software to be sending
| data anywhere outside my network.)
|
| It's not uncommon for me to approve such features when I'm
| dealing with software I _trust_ , and when I'm thoroughly
| informed of _exactly what data they 're collecting and why_.
| If I see a list of reasonable data points and it's not too
| intrusive or overreaching (and if I can examine the data
| _before_ it 's sent) then I'm quite often okay with it
| (again, with software I _already trust_ for other reasons).
| dantondwa wrote:
| I think there's a misunderstanding: Tantacrul, the developer
| with a pretty active Youtube channel, works for the Muse Group,
| which acquired Audacity. This has nothing to do with him. A
| company acquired Audacity, not him, and he's not in charge of
| the Muse Group. Your portraying of the whole thing is
| inaccurate.
|
| People didn't lose their collective minds.
|
| The Muse Group acquired Audacity, then introduced:
|
| - a CLA (which, between other things, allows them to make
| closed source versions of Audacity)
|
| - telemetry
|
| - a very controversial privacy policy
|
| People aren't losing their minds. And please, do not spread
| misinformation.
| maccard wrote:
| >people aren't losing there minds
|
| Have you read this thread? See [0] as an example.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740350
| whateveracct wrote:
| > a CLA (which, between other things, allows them to make
| closed source versions of Audacity)
|
| But all previous commits they'd build on are GPL..
| zxzax wrote:
| Controversial? This looks extremely similar to most other
| privacy policies. I would urge you to read the privacy policy
| on any other web sites that you visit, or for any other
| services that you use, and compare and contrast. A good
| starting point might be the privacy policy on your phone's
| app store.
| Lammy wrote:
| We're talking about Free Software -- not about websites,
| services, or mobile cartels.
| zxzax wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're suggesting the difference is, or
| what specifically here is a "mobile cartel?" FOSS
| projects and other related things also have privacy
| policies, and in fact you probably want them to so that
| they're clear what they're doing with the data they've
| aggregated. Here's some examples:
|
| https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-
| privacy...
|
| https://www.debian.org/legal/privacy.en.html
|
| https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy
|
| https://www.fsf.org/about/free-software-foundation-
| privacy-p...
| Lammy wrote:
| Those are all talking about interacting with those
| projects' websites and community events, not about
| interacting with the software those projects produce or
| package. It is absolutely not the norm that Free Software
| running on my machine reports my usage.
| zxzax wrote:
| Do you expect to be able to receive updates and security
| fixes to your installed programs? Or send back a patch or
| bug report? If so, then it absolutely is the norm,
| because all that needs to be done over the internet and
| can generate PII. It probably shouldn't be assumed that a
| distribution platform can avoid having a clear and
| straightforward privacy policy because it calls itself a
| "FOSS repo" and not an "app store." Or did I miss
| something? Do some people only exchange security updates
| and crash dumps off of physical media given in person?
| Lammy wrote:
| > Do some people only exchange security updates and crash
| dumps off of physical media given in person?
|
| Sure it's not "the norm" but personally I run a
| Poudriere[0] server and build all my own software
| packages. One server syncs the FreeBSD Ports collection
| and downloads the needed software source distfiles, but
| then none of my other machines/jails are allowed to
| install software from anywhere outside my own network. A
| lot of them don't get any Internet access at all.
|
| That still has nothing to do with in-app analytics
| though.
|
| [0] https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere/wiki
| zxzax wrote:
| I'm still not sure what you're saying, you're still
| downloading the source from an external website on the
| internet, which I would expect would have a privacy
| policy, and would do things like comply with the GDPR.
| And presumably, the ports collection is getting the
| original source from upstreams, which could be on github
| or a similar service, so you can't sidestep that if you
| want to maintain your own ports tree.
|
| It absolutely does have to do with analytics: in
| particular, Debian has an opt-in anayltics system called
| "popcon" which is mentioned in the privacy policy.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Said developer adds telemetry to help make more informed
| decisions. People lose their collective minds.
|
| I have never once used software I thought was actually good
| that was designed based on feedback from telemetry.
| arkitaip wrote:
| How would you know though? Telemetry is so common in desktop
| and web apps alike that you're probably surrounded by it.
| McGlockenshire wrote:
| > Said developer adds telemetry to help make more informed
| decisions. People lose their collective minds.
|
| I don't understand the reaction either. It's hard to talk about
| this stuff here because of the anti-analytics groupthink.
| Everyone seems to jump to the worst possible conclusion
| whenever it's brought up.
|
| I can't help but wonder if the people screeching about it have
| ever actually put analytics in their own products.
| Understanding how your software is used in the real world by
| real users is absolutely invaluable!
| frobozz wrote:
| One thing would be not violating the Open Source Definition by
| forbidding use by under 13s.
| techrat wrote:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/au...
| system16 wrote:
| I think if you read the comments in the link, it's pretty
| clear: changes regarding personal information were dumped on
| the community along with a bunch of legalese without warning,
| an announcement, or context. Had the new maintainers given the
| community a heads up via a simple blog post explaining the
| reasoning behind this, we wouldn't be where we are. Hopefully
| they can chalk this off as a learning experience and move
| forward to gain trust of the community.
| kennywinker wrote:
| You missed: project purchased by ad-heavy website owner
| (ultimateguitar).
|
| As for how they could make it better: make it opt-in not opt-
| out.
|
| This is the kind of toxic behaviour we all tolerate from
| commercial software, but people get mad when it leaks into open
| source.
| Xc43 wrote:
| An example of the problem is that in the UK those below 13yo
| cannot give consent to telemetry. Audacity is used in their
| public schooling system. Newer versions of Audacity will not be
| usable by those students anymore.
|
| Roughly.
| ronsor wrote:
| So they just don't consent to it? The telemetry certainly
| isn't mandatory; it isn't even enabled by default from what I
| can tell.
| Xc43 wrote:
| There was no opt-out. Minors were asked not to use the app.
|
| Here is the link towards the Privacy notice on the 2nd of
| July. https://archive.fo/d3LBR#selection-673.0-673.129
| xavriley wrote:
| Asked not to is different from forbidden though, no? I'm
| not a legal expert but I doubt this clause is one they
| wanted to put in and is probably driven by some legal
| counsel with an eye on international law.
| rStar wrote:
| lawyers do what they're told. This is the acquiring
| company maximizing the value of their acquisition by any
| means possible.
| Xc43 wrote:
| In this case, children 12 and below cannot give consent
| but they can use the app if parental consent is given.
|
| Having children in that age range use the app would
| require Audacity to seek parental consent by "[making]
| reasonable efforts (taking into account the available
| technology and risks inherent in the processing) to
| verify that the person providing consent holds parental
| responsibility for the child."1
|
| While they wrote to minors "please do not use the App",
| they also wrote "The App we provide is not intended for
| individuals below the age of 13."2 Not being a lawyer, I
| cannot talk about the implications of these passages.
|
| src1: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio... src2: link in my parent comment
| foerbert wrote:
| The specific situation being pointed out here is that the
| software is/was used in public schools. It doesn't really
| fit in the category of "if nobody knows, nobody cares,
| and nobody wants to know" that you'll find on your on
| personal device.
|
| The school installing software that has terms not
| allowing those under 13 to use it, because those kids
| don't have the legal right to consent to the software
| collecting information from them, has a very real chance
| of becoming an issue - both for the school and whoever
| made the decision.
| Majromax wrote:
| It sounds like _any_ Internet use by children in schools
| would be a legal issue, then. If IP addresses are
| considered personally identifiable information subject to
| consent policies, then ordinary web logging is data
| collection that a child can not consent to.
|
| A more direct example would be in Chrome/Firefox/etc
| automatically checking for updates, which is the
| equivalent of what Audacity describes in the linked post.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Said developer adds telemetry to help make more informed
| decisions. People lose their collective minds.
|
| Their ability to make decisions doesn't matter. It is does not
| justify putting spyware into previously trusted software.
|
| Also, nobody believes that excuse for a second. They couldn't
| care less about "improving" anything but their bottom line.
| They are merely capitalizing on the trustworthiness of an open
| source project in an attempt to extract maximum value out of
| its users.
|
| If they wanted to improve the software, they would have hired
| somebody with good taste to work on it. People with good taste
| do not tolerate abusive spyware.
|
| > Can someone fill me in on what this person could have done
| better?
|
| They could have not collected any "metrics" in the first place.
| That way, this ridiculous privacy policy would never have been
| necessary.
| Andoryuuta wrote:
| Alongside the Audacity changes, the Muse group has also performed
| some highly questionable actions in the context of MuseScore,
| such as falsely claiming that a downloader script was illegal,
| and that they owned copyright of all sheet music on their site.
| Going as far as to state that they will "cooperate with
| github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop
| the illegal use of licensed content." [0].
|
| Unfortunately, I don't believe the general users of audacity will
| ever hear about the groups actions, and will continue to use the
| audacity without knowledge of what has changed.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5
| Xylakant wrote:
| That thread is certainly not a good example of communication,
| but I cannot find any place where a representative from the
| Muse group says that they own the copyright to all sheet music
| on their site. They say (and that's to the best of my knowledge
| mostly correct at least here in Germany) that the arrangement
| for music is legally protected and even if someone else typed
| down the sheet, the rights to this sheet are still protected.
| And they point to the music industry enforcing restrictions
| (having worked with the music industry, I find that one
| entirely credible)
| maccard wrote:
| There's a thread on an AMA about ultimate guitar from a while
| back where the founder talks about when they made the
| decisions to start adding the features people complain about,
| and the impression he gives is exactly that; the rights
| holders of the music had them over a barrel and it was a sink
| or swim decision
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > Going as far as to state that they will "cooperate with
| github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and
| stop the illegal use of licensed content."
|
| Wow, that's low. It's one thing to send dumb threats, it's
| another to threaten someone with involvement of a government
| that frequently disappears people. This is how you turn your
| products into the PR equivalent of radioactive waste.
| throwaaskjdfh wrote:
| The tone of the post from the Musescore developer at [0] is so
| bizarre I wonder if the people who manage the company's
| policies and communications even know about it.
| kzrdude wrote:
| In that case, at least there is some separation between the
| site musescore.com and the musescore open source app.
| sneak wrote:
| > _We believe concerns are due largely to unclear phrasing in the
| Privacy Policy_
|
| This is gaslighting. It's not the wording people have an issue
| with, it's the nonconsensual spyware.
| akerl_ wrote:
| How could it be nonconsensual? The policy is provided when
| installing the software. This may certainly be a bad decision
| for the Audacity team, but nobody is being forced to use their
| product.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Nobody reads much less agrees to these idiotic policy texts.
| I don't care who made the software or their "conditions" for
| using it. If it's running on my machine, it answers to me and
| me alone. This "we put it on the terms and conditions so it's
| fine" bullshit needs to go away.
| akerl_ wrote:
| I wonder if this is what the folks on the Copilot team
| thought, shortly after cloning all those licensed repos to
| their machines.
|
| If you're not concerned with the licensing on software once
| you've managed to get a copy, I guess Audacity's behavior
| shouldn't be an issue: just compel it to behave differently
| on your machine.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > just compel it to behave differently on your machine
|
| Oh I will. The thing is I shouldn't _have_ to do this. We
| 're all tired of these obnoxious companies forcing this
| sort of crap on us. Why can't they just release their
| stupid thing with no strings attached? If this is their
| "contribution" I'd rather they just did nothing.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "just compel it to behave differently on your machine."
|
| Right there you name one of the _biggest joys_ of FOSS
| for me. On _my_ machine, I sure do love that all my tools
| do _my_ bidding the way _I_ want them to. :)
| anonymousab wrote:
| It is nonconsensual when the starting premise is "using
| Audacity".
|
| "Consensual" in that case would mean opt-in telemetry.
| akerl_ wrote:
| That's some serious mental gymnastics. I'll be sure file a
| complaint at the supermarket for nonconsenual collections:
| I wanted to take the vegetables home, but they don't let me
| opt out of paying.
| elmo2you wrote:
| Unless the telemetry is somehow a form of payment for
| using the (open source) product, I think your argument
| falls under:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
| akerl_ wrote:
| Given that the context here is "a producer of something
| setting the terms under which they'll give it to somebody
| else", my grocery store hardly sounds like an extreme
| example.
| elmo2you wrote:
| I don't think it's always that easy. Once people are
| committed to a certain product, quitting or switching to an
| alternative isn't always simple or even possible. There can
| even be substantial financial damage involved. Maybe not in a
| way that the producer can be held legally liable for, but
| damage nonetheless.
|
| I believe this argument of "users have a freedom to either
| take it or leave it" has been repeatedly debunked many times
| over. It just isn't accurately describing reality.
| akerl_ wrote:
| It does reflect reality, as evidenced by what's about to
| happen for Audacity: if they keep the terms as-is, people
| will either use the software as the terms are written or
| they'll stop using it.
|
| As an example, UK schools are likely to have to either
| negotiate an alternate license or switch products.
|
| What's been "debunked" is that products die off because of
| things like adding telemetry, because plenty of people
| don't consider that a dealbreaker
| elmo2you wrote:
| It certainly looks that way. Though in fairness, gaslighting
| implies the intent to deceive. I fear that these folk could
| actually be more of the kind that simply doesn't see anything
| wrong with their way of "making" money.
|
| While technically legal (although the last about that might not
| have been said either), I think they are going to find out how
| their grubby ideas of right-and-wrong might not align at all
| with a substantial part of the user base of the product they
| now own.
|
| I believe that they are already doing actual practical harm in
| some places, which might end up costing them dearly if it would
| trigger some kind of organized revolt. With their behavior so
| far, that can/will only end in escalation. I very much doubt
| that the plans of this new owner will become the financial
| success they may have imagined.
|
| Sadly, Audacity as a product will no doubt suffer as a
| consequence. Still makes me wonder if there hasn't been some
| kind of financial support/injection by a commercial vendor
| involved, somehow. Of course it doesn't have to, but the idea
| just does not want to leave me alone.
| 41209 wrote:
| Any good alternatives.
|
| It's better to consider the project dead then to argue with them
| racl101 wrote:
| I'd totally get a paid product like Ableton or Pro Tools if
| they didn't send data about me.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| It really depends on what you need.
|
| There are lots of non-FOSS but effectively-free alternatives.
| Ocenaudio is way better than Audacity in gobs of ways, except
| it's not multi-track. Reaper is pretty great but if you're
| hoping for commercial use with $20K+ gross/year, you need to
| pay $200+ USD.
|
| In FOSS land, Zrhythm, Qtractor, LMMS...but these are DAWs so
| again it depends on what you were using Audacity for. You could
| even learn sox and maybe benefit from some command line use,
| like writing scripts for things you need to do all the time.
|
| My advice: List the specific tasks you need to do, and aim to
| find 2-3 apps that will fill the gap. Then any extras on top of
| that will be gravy.
|
| Edit: Oh and you can also use FOSS like Blender and render
| edited sound to mp3, or KDEnlive, or other software that's
| video or animation related. So if you already know those tools,
| or like how they work (in some ways they are pretty slick!)
| then they may fit better than other audio-only software.
| noobermin wrote:
| It looks like just info you pick up if you visit the site for
| download. May be the initial communication was an issue but this
| doesn't make it spyware necessarily. They also say it has nothing
| to do with "offline use."
|
| May be the story is as I said the initial communication now, not
| with the privacy policy changes, no? I'm starting to feel had,
| there is literally no telemetry here, that's just internet hype
| and rumors.
|
| EDIT: there is telemetry for bug reporting...okay that's optional
| so I'm still seeing no fire.
| xs wrote:
| The thing that isn't addressed. Their terms now say that people
| 13 and under cannot use their product. Yet this tool is taught in
| schools. They want to collect this data but do not want to follow
| COPPA laws.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Audacity 3.0 called spyware over data collection changes by new
| owner_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27736151 - July
| 2021 (70 comments)
|
| _Audacity may collect "Data necessary for law enforcement,
| litigation" and more_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27727150 - July 2021 (254
| comments)
|
| _New [July 2, 2021] Audacity Data Collection Policy_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27724389 - July 2021 (34
| comments)
| gigatexal wrote:
| Too much ill-will generated with this sudden takeover of
| audacity. Best to move on to alternatives and forks and forget
| about Audacity's new owners.
|
| https://ardour.org/
| Xylakant wrote:
| ardour may have worded that better than the audacity folks, but
| make no mistake, as per it's privacy policy ardour will phone
| home (to check for new versions), store information about bugs
| and comply with requests from law enforcement.
| If you download and use a ready-to-run version of Ardour from
| ardour.org, the program will attempt to contact ardour.org at
| startup to determine if you should be notified about a new
| release of the software. If the computer where you use Ardour
| is connected to the internet, this process will store the
| computer's internet address and an identifier for its operating
| system. If you report a bug to our bug
| tracker, we will store whatever information you provide as part
| of the bug report. When Do We Privately Share
| Personal Data? Never, unless required to by
| law.
| kawsper wrote:
| > What does the OS version string contain (e.g. on Linux
| specifically)? Some custom kernel version strings could possibly
| identify someone.
|
| I actually didn't think of this, I compile my own kernels and add
| my own text to the kernel name.
| thayne wrote:
| As a linux user, I have absolutely no need for an auto-update
| feature. Hopefully that is something that can be disabled at both
| build time and run time.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Dumb question: Audacity has a GPL license, so it can be forked or
| built and distributed by a third party, right?
| Gaelan wrote:
| Yep. In particular, any version of audacity from a Linux
| distro's package manager is likely already built with telemetry
| off.
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