Re: Audacity has new administration

[Chris Lemmer-Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org>]

Mark H Weaver writes:

> Hi,
>
> Bone Baboon <bone.baboon@disroot.org> writes:
>
>> My initial message in this email tread did not clearly communicate what
>> the issues with Muse Group's new privacy policy for Audacity are.
>>
>> The two main issues are the on by default telemetry and that Audacity
>> can no longer be used for any purpose contradicting freedom 0.
>>
>> # On by default telemetry
>>
>> On by default telemetry is being introduced to Audacity.  This does not
>> comply with the No Malware section of the FSDG.
>> <https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html>
>>
>> The on by default telemetry collects IP address information, system
>> information and Audacity version information.
>> <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/1225#discussioncomment-967178>
>> <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/1225#discussioncomment-966782>
>> <https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/>
>
> Thanks for letting us know about this.  When the telemetry functionality
> was first added a few months ago, they emphasized that it was disabled
> by default.  Now it seems that they have changed their minds and intend
> to enable some telemetry by default.
>
> We'll need to keep an eye on this, to ensure that all telemetry is
> disabled by default in Guix.
>
>> # Freedom 0
>>
>> Audacity can no longer be used for any purpose.  Section 3 of the Muse
>> Group's new privacy policy for Audacity
>> <https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/> says:
>>
>>> 3 Minors
>>>
>>> 1 The App we provide is not intended for individuals below the age
>>> of 13. If you are under 13 years old, please do not use the App.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, but nonetheless I'm _highly_ confident that this
> language in their (draft) privacy policy has no binding force.  By
> publishing Audacity's source code under a free software license, they
> have irrevocably granted the four freedoms to anyone who has a copy.
> Any license that would allow the copyright owner(s) to restrict the four
> freedoms is not a free software license.
>
> Moreover, their privacy policy is irrelevant if they aren't able to
> collect any information about us.  By disabling telemetry, we ensure
> that their privacy policy is irrelevant to Guix users who do not
> "opt-in".

I think that seems right.  Also there's a fork of Audacity in progress
called "Tenacity", but it seems early days.  It might be worth
considering that.

I have to say that initially I was unsure how well to interpret the Muse
Group acquisition in terms of with good or bad faith... maybe these were
just blunders.  Well, I've been fully corrected of that by this recent
post:

  https://web.archive.org/web/20210719115639if_/https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issuecomment-882450335

Basically the person in charge of that takeover trying to perform an
aggressive takedown of a download tool, resorting to direct threats
about using an alleged copyright infringement to get someone to be
deported to their allged country of origin, and directly stating that
the person should consider that since they performed some actions of
political criticism against that country, they could be tortured or
killed if not complying with that takedown.

We should assume that the current copyright holder / maintainer is not
going to behave in a user freedom friendly way at all based on that
information.

 - Chris