Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features Contributors disgruntled with the recent direction of cross-platform FOSS audio software Audacity are forking the sound editor to a version that does not have the features or requirements that have upset some in the community. One such project can be found on GitHub, with user "cookiengineer" proclaiming themselves "evil …
Me too, it's elegant and most of all, serious sounding.
That name might not attract cheers in forums for it's fun or cleverness, but the program has to live with it for the rest of its life, and people have to be able to talk about it to other people who aren't specifically looking for puns and general smart-alecness. The GIMP was harmed a lot by its name.
"... You might be free and have a bunch of handy options that make sound editing a breeze (or more accurately, that look a bit crap really but at least it's free) but that's no excuse for prying on your cheapskate customers and their perfectly legitimate uses for your handy but cluncky looking software!"
Yours,
Frank Doberman
Agreed that it's good non-tech people are pushing back. For too long telemetry has been used for reasons that are not just to improve the user's experience. I didn't read the privacy policy for Audacity, so I can't speak specifically to that case.
But I know from looking at several FLOSS projects (Moodle, Lyx) that the way the developers figure out if/how a feature is being used is to send email to the developer list to ask people (usually developers, who are incredibly biased) what they think about such and such feature. That is such a backwards way to evaluate functions compared to tracking how users work (research in UX will show you that you have to observe users using the software if you want to get useful information). I only wish there was some way for FLOSS to use telemetry for true anonymous data to improve features without trust being doubted. Thanks Facebook/Google/Microsoft/Adobe/etc.
"number of 4chan users elected to launch a raid on it."
Protecting good guy Muse Group? Hah, how bizarre those 4chan kids are.
I like Audacious because it is close to Audacity. And thus a good "fsck you guys!".
However, a clear separation would possibly be better in the long run so new users don't accidentally download the obsolete Audacity rather than the proper modern alternative.
I took a look at the timelines of the people who were attacking Cookie Engineer and surprise! I found the standard combination of anime and porn posts that indicate bot accounts, at least to me. So who knows who's actually on the attack here.
This is not the only Audacity fork out there, and I'm curious as to how those accounts are also being treated.
Linux distros will turn off the telemetry for version 3.03 and above anyway, guaranteed[1], so the privacy notice won't apply. Muse/Audacity project has been quite clear that telemetry applies only to binaries directly downloaded.
So the thing now is how to make sure that schools &c know where to get the no-(telemetry/crash reporting/any form of talking to network) versions from when they get around to upgrading from the version 2.x they are probably using at present. That will be the Windows/MacOS binaries which I assume are mostly downloaded from the main project web site.
Icon: it would be a shame to lose this software from school/college machines. Longer term: a simple to use multitracking audio editor that is just for *local* use would be great.
[1] example from the slackbuilds project (Slackware) - scroll down to last part of post
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/just-in-time-for-15-audacity-becomes-spyware-maybe-4175697320/#post6264269
Debian experimental page for audacity - they are still looking at the released version 3.02 that does not have the crash report/tracking built in but that will change over the next few months I imagine.
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/audacity
"Linux distros will turn off the telemetry for version 3.03 and above anyway,"
Mmmmmm I think the opposite. Microsoft's VSCode is a increasingly popular example of this, you still have to untick the box. While in a grey area, even base Ubuntu assumes that you want to "report", otherwise the prompt to send would never appear (yeh that's a grey area, but still there's something there). I just assume everything wants to spy in some manner now days.
Hindenburg? Oh, the humanity, they actually did intentionally go there with that reference. Yes, it was a long time ago, but I still can't help but think that that's in rather poor taste.
Maybe they thought it a good idea because not was it before they were born, but quite probably before their parents were born. It's "just" history. For those of us a bit older, it still feels wrong, maybe because we are closer to it time/generations.
After all, there are increasingly large numbers of people in the UK celebrating the terrorist uprising in the colonies back in the 1770's :-)
You’re giving far too much credit to the suggestion of a bog-standard Latin word. (Audeo means “I am prepared, I dare/have courage, &c.”; audemus is simply the plural form of audeo.)
Since AUDACITY® is a registered trademark in the USA (if not elsewhere) that is now owned by Muse Group, and given that Muse Group filed for a US trademark on the Audacity headphones logo a few months ago, perhaps a moose mascot/logo would be suitably punning for a product named Audemus.
The collective noun of Modesty users could be an annoyance.
As for the 4chan lusers, clean up their mess without commenting or otherwise acknowledging that they are shitting all over the place. All they are looking for is a reaction, don't give them one and they will go away. Or, in the word of the Profit "If you feed the trolls, you get to keep them."
Speak for yourself -- they're mates of mine! And yes, they bring the knot to the gigs.
https://www.amazon.com/Boardroom-Monkeys-Fist/dp/B00LQ8I3M2
Oh, look, listenable tracks: try Arfur Chewn
...just saw your username...
You might enjoy a massive memory-fest from these 2 books: ICL Anthology I & II:
http://bitsandbytes.shedlandz.co.uk/hc_books.htm/ Also the Fujitsu newsletters there have some good stories, eg the chap measuring voltage by hand -- as in placing his hand across bus bars.
(Actually ANYone will like those books. Lots of little stories and insights. Great for dipping in&out of. I particularly like Charles Dickens's grandson's magnificent management style.)
Plus some obscure bitching re sneaky tricks here on this site.
PS: "they're really good" -- yes, they are, aren't they? Even better live. And did you twig that the wind instrument is a penny whistle? :D
There’s already an audio editor that’s named Audio Editor (JavaScript required; scroll down to the “Other Products” section of the page).
Following the current trend of sticking punctuation in names (Cee'd, Up! for cars) with the added bonus of only true escapists will be able to install it.
Or we could just call it what most people have been calling it for years: Thatsoundeditorthingywithroundbuttons-youknowtheone-yeahthat'sit.deb
"This is why we can't have nice things".sums it up nicely. When the corrupting green-eyed monster greed is turned to an open source project, a majority fail miserably. Anybody remember Mandrake Linux? Kudos to the currently named "tenacity team" for a job well done with the fork and removal of the collection and tracking code that has no business in a FOSS project. Regardless of whether Muse intended the compilation of the tracking code to be optional, the binaries were built with it enabled. It is a bit disengenuous to say "the tracking and data collection is optional" when disabling it requires building the entire project from source -- something only a small fraction of people can do. The F-bomb was rightfully dropped in this case.
This isn't the first time people have issued adware infested applications -- early versions just enabled annoying pop-ups, though, rather than the intrusive 'analytics' that they now want to collect.
What I can't figure out is how Audacity users would form a distinct enough class of people to warrant collecting marketing information about. I guess the Internet marketing business is probably 95% froth caused by a mass of believers who all support each others' efforts less one unbeliever causes the edifice to collapse so every bit of data is precious, no matter how useless it actually is.
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