this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
88 points (84.4% liked)

Linux

47361 readers
926 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
all 26 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Did they ever fix that issue from a while back where they started collecting personal data on users?

https://www.engadget.com/audacity-privacy-policy-spyware-accusations-data-collection-210001803.html

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

There was a Lemmy post with a video about how things have changed, which I even commented on, but I can't find anymore.

What I remember was that yes they did address most of the concerns. There were some issues still (unrelated to data collection iirc), and there's one other fork that's being maintained if you don't want that

Edit: I think the was the video, I don't want to watch it again but I'll link my TLDW if I find it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QfmDn1IaDmY

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That is the real question. Would like to recommend the program to people again.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Tenacity is a fork designed to address those concerns, and it is mostly beyond fork growing pains at this point

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Oh very cool. Thanks a lot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tearing branding and telemetry and build deployment stuff and crap out of forked software is a lot of work that takes some time

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I see. Makes sense now.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

The oss community forked it into ' tenacity' after audacity went into spyware mode

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

IKR. Why are we even covering news about audacity releases anymore?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Dunno, but I kind of feel this is an opener to promote commercial software on Linux, since the Muse team can suck it.

You've got:

All of them have premium prices, but not a single one of them freemium, or always-online, meaning you get what you pay for and what you pay for is high quality software.

Presonus if you need a pro tracker, or even the chance at mixing Atmos on Linux (though the hardware needs to be supported OS-side of things).

Mixbus 32C is cool, because it's EQ's and compressors are analogue modelled after their classic console. They got that real nice vintage sound.

Bitwig is basically a mixer/sequencer DAW, meant for electronic music and live performances.

Now if only Ableton Live could be ported to Linux :( pretty please?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Wait what information does audacity collect when your using it?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Is there a fork of MuseScore too (the same devs, I think)?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I am not sure, would you post the repo for me, please?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago

please use Tenacity

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm still using 2.3.3 as 3.3.3 won't save project files on Google Drive. As a radio station, that's kinda important for creating sponsor messages etc.

Will check out Tenacity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Couldn't you just setup a local folder with syncing to drive enabled, and then save to that folder?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't work with music at all, so most of this update doesn't mean much to me. However, it's nice to see the export window was improved—I want my single-click behavior, damn it.

The telemetry is limited to update-checking and error reports. Distributions will disable update-checking because they already handle updating Audacity. Error reports need to be manually submitted. It's possible that most distributions just disable networking altogether when building Audacity, if it even exists in their repositories at all. Fedora's package is waaay out of date. Arch disables networking altogether.

Audacity has still instituted a CLA. This is quite worrying. But nothing has happened yet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A CLA isn't worrying and in of itself. Not all CLAs are made equal. No idea about Audacity's specifically.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I should have specified that the Audacity CLA allowed Muse Group to relicense Audacity from GPLv2 to GPLv3. Yes, I agree with you that not all CLAs are bad. While you keep the copyright to all your contributions, because the copyright is assigned to them (? I'm not actually sure about this), they can relicense it. The CLA agreement.

You grant MUSECY SM LTD, an affiliate of MuseScore and Ultimate Guitar, (“Company”) the ability to use the Contributions in any way. You hereby grant to Company , a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such derivative works.

There was quite a lot of confusion and outrage about this at the time, so I can't recall whether Muse Group specifically said they wanted to include Audacity in Apple's app store or this was given as an example of why the CLA could be beneficial. My rebuttal was this is not a particularly noble cause. There was also the argument that the FSF requires you to sign a CLA for its own projects so it can reserve the right to relicense it if it benefits the project. My rebuttal to this was...well, it's the FSF. The day the FSF relicenses their software under a non-free license is the day they die.

All in all, I'm not worried yet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

just use OcenAudio