A WEEK ago I installed Audacity for the first time in ages (I had installed it several times before). I was so pleased by its progress and the stability (it was always rock-solid and it still is), so I decided to recommend it the same day we recorded a show -- first episode in six years.
"It certainly seems like the new buyer is in a hurry to 'monetise' the Free software, even at the expense of users' privacy/freedom."The following day I was disappointed to learn about the unfortunately-timed sale of the project, as covered by the media since Monday [1, 2, 3, 4] (in chronological order of publication and also order of appearance in this video).
I didn't think it was a big deal until earlier today. As Alex put it (at the #techrights
IRC channel): "less than a week since muse acquisition, audacity adds telemetry (universal google analytics), disguised as "anonymous analytics and crash reports" (as if data passage is their new business model or something). Is this another Mozilla? The company that collects a lot of data from Firefox users and sends such data to Google (for the most part)?
To show what's posted in a Microsoft site (screenshot below to reduce traffic to it), notice how many votes point downwards:
Audacity development already spied on by Microsoft and NSA (PRISM), so why not add Google/Yandex to the software itself?