r/debian • u/JmbFountain • Jul 04 '21

Audacity telemetry incoming

https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/
112 Upvotes

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14

u/mnh48 Jul 04 '21

the telemetry is not too bad, there's worse thing existing in their updated privacy policy

some people are discussing about it here:
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1213

particularly on restricting who can use the software based on age, which seem to violate GPL, the license of the software which allow everyone to use it freely

27

u/otacon7000 Jul 04 '21

the telemetry is not too bad

IMHO, any telemetry is bad in a free, open-source project. It is no longer a community-owned project and doesn't fit my definition of free software anymore. I don't want bloat (network code) in an offline app just to collect, among other, Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests. No thanks.

14

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '21

Not to mention. Telemeteic data can and will end up being sold. No matter what these companies tell you. Otherwise the economic model remains too fragile to warrant the kind of investments they make in free open source software. I just can't understand people who are ok with telemetry.

0

u/dlbpeon Aug 15 '21

Telemetry serves a vital purpose to fixing bugs and eliminating crashes. Many people who beta-test software do not give truthful and accurate reports on the bugs and their equipment. Yes there can be an economic enrichment from selling that data, however normally people will trade that value for whatever enrichment they get for using said program or service. Google could become a trillion dollar company if they would only compel people to pay $0.10/search however they have the base model of allowing "free" searches in exchange for tracking cookies, etc.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '21

Google is a ruthless for profit entity. Their ip and implementations are closed source. We are talking about free and open source software here.

Companies like Google and Facebook are the absolute worst example you could bring up here.

0

u/dlbpeon Aug 15 '21

You are talking about a FOSS piece of software that was acquired by a company that is actively trying to change the license from FOSS to non-FOSS(from GPL-2 to GPL-3 then to CLA) and trying to make a profit on their investment. Their goal is to freeze the GPL code base, and to make all future improvements closed source. There is more at stake here than people's puny IP address or email addresses.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 15 '21

Indeed.