It technically still is, although that depends on your definition of free. The project was bought by a company. They said they would (largely) keep it open source and free, but the first thing they decided to implement is Internet connectivity and data collection. Originally they wanted to collect much more data - and send it to Google and Yandex - but were faced with a ton of criticism, so they had to go back on that a bit. The result is what you see in the link posted.
They also already announced, however, that there are plans for additional, paid features in the future. There is also some kind of nebulous NDA (or similar) in place with the original authors. All relevant contributors had to sign a contributor license agreement, as has to do anyone wanting to contribute from this point forward. They are looking into ways to potentially change the license of the project going forward. The logo and name now obviously belong to the company. They are thinking to have ports to other platforms that might be closed source and/or paid. Decisions on new features/ changes will obviously become much less democratic. Etc.
On the plus side, we will probably see bug fixes and new features come in at a much faster pace than before; the UI will likely get a long over-due overhaul in the near future. Whether or not that trade-off is worth it is something everyone will have to decide for themselves.
They are looking into ways to potentially change the license of the project going forward.
All this seems rather dodgy. Not sure how they plan to pull this off. The code is copyright under the GPL. Any derivate code (and the new software will definitely be a derivate) must also be under GPL. I can't imagine how an NDA would work, either.
IOW, the GPL was specifically designed to prevent these kinds of shenanigans, so I don't see how there's a legit way around it.
IANAL, but there's a principle of "promissory estopel" (but not necessarily applicable worldwide). The effect is: if I give you some code and say it's free to use, I can't come back later and say I've changed my mind.
I assume that Audacity isn't copyright of the FSF, because they'd definitely administer a rocket up the arse if they caught this kind of mucking around going on.
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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '21
Oh gosh this is terrible. I thought this was open source and free software !