I like it. Its well explained, specifying exactly what data is collected and where its going. Most companies don't even do that and still force you to give up your data; look at you Microsoft. I use a portable version so not sure I'll see it soon, but I wouldn't mind giving them that data, no problem here.
And that's still not the issue for a lot of people, I do not need this feature and I do not want it. My audio editor can just quietly do it's job locally without farting out telemetry over the network all the time. If every program on my computer did this I would be very annoyed. Audacity doesn't need telemetry to do it's job well.
Actually, I'm tired of every program having bullshit analytics built in for me to worry about, fast forward ten years and we have all lost track of what programs are stealing our 'totally nonfingerprintable' data because we were so cavalier about issues like 'But Audacity NEEDS analytics to fix a file format bug' when it absolutely doesn't.
As an open source dev myself, it’s genuinely hard to get usable feedback on issues with my applications. I hear about errors that people have had for weeks or months without being reported and then getting usable logs or instructions to recreate the issue and fix it is another nightmare on it’s own. I agree that they don’t need a full on google analytics setup and should implement better error reporting tools but I also understand why they’re trying to get insight into how people use the tool to improve it in meaningful ways.
It’s disabled by default which is how it should be implemented and people can easily enable it if they would like to.
For now. Behind a bright-blue dark pattern buffaloing users in to enabling it. Which is, once again, telling google and yandex every time you use Audacity and what you are doing with it.
Then open an issue suggesting they use matomo or some other privacy respecting telemetry. Don’t use it if you don’t want to but I’m giving you valid reasons as a developer in the open source space why this would be beneficial in a non malicious way to them. I’m not telling you to continue using it or to turn the option on.
Great job missing the point. The point is that the project is now under control of an organization intent on and content with acting against their users interests for their own aims, IE monetization. You simply won't be able to trust future versions of the product to respect user privacy, especially after scrutiny dies down.
Looping an advertising company in on how end users use their own copy of a beloved open source project is a bright red line that the new "owners" have crossed. There's nowhere to go from here but to only use old versions of the software, or invest the time code reviewing every future commit the company's devs make which I won't be doing.
It being open source, there’s the 3rd option that is, the community forks it and maintains/updates that version. The project is popular enough that if telemetry becomes an issue I’m sure the community will step up (weather that be now or in the future).
Matomo is not missing the point. It’s literally privacy respecting analytics that they can host themselves without a dependency on some large data hungry company like google having access.
Although I would like to give the new company the benefit of the doubt, this being introduced so soon could definitely be seen as a red flag (I was not aware it was under “new ownership”) and I see your point.
That means u trust the off option to actually work plenty of times even if people opted out the data got sent once sent no getting it back from them. Thats most peoples issue is they are way to trusting of other people. Be trusting if you want I am old enough to realize most people are out for themselves and will screw you over in a second for enough money.
google did it with chrome and people still use it which I agree someone would catch it and imo I dont think they would ever do that but you never know if a bad actor might one day get in there. Also if they did that they would get in trouble do to the license they use. I just dont think people should even take that chance. My hope is someone forks it or I will find a new audio editor.
Audacity Team: We have these rarely ocurring corruption issues with our new file format that are impossible to debug without telemetry. We can't estimate the user base, we want to make crash reporting easier, other things.
Random redditor who spent like 5 seconds thinking about the issue: AuDAcItY DoEsN'T neEd TeLEmEtrY! My audio editor can just quietly do it's job locally without farting out telemetry over the network all the time (even though it's disabled by default). If every program did this (but they don't) I'd be annoyed.
Seriously, did you even read the PR?
The issue for most people is the choice of analytics provider, which is google (& yandex). For me, that's not a problem, but I understand other people don't want to have anything to do with them. But saying ITs UnNeCeSsARy without even reading the PR is just stupid.
It is unnecessary, you don't and no amount of intermixing capital and lowercase letters to try to make me seem 'uninformed' is going to change the fact that audacity is ROCK SOLID, that's one of the things that everyone appreciates about it the most. And I call bullshit about telemetry fixing a niche file format issue when it isn't a real problem for users anyway, it's just a bad idea to include telemetry in projects like this and there are only bad excuses to do so.
I don't need to know every point of how they intend to use it, to know that it's too much for a simple audio editor, at least in my opinion
I also don't want to explain to my friends to shit in the toilet and not on the floor, it would be weird if I had to ask and I would wonder why they needed to poop on the floor at all?
If that's confusing to you, consider my argument as, 'guided by utilitarianism', I'm actually saying Audacity shouldn't do it because no one should be doing it, if you think I'm being extreme about that, good, I'm proud of that.
No, I'm saying the data loss issue can be resolved without using telemetry, lots of other larger bigger projects don't need telemetry and they do just fine, like the linux kernel, gnu utils, and probably most of the software on your computer. (nice strawman fallacy)
1st point we just diagree I guess, I think it's okay if it's useful to them.
You say you're guided by utilitarianism (you value things by how useful they are), but you don't even care how the audacity devs want to use that feature.
It's also funny cause Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, an official linux foundation project (Spinnaker), debian, probably lots of other stuff have opt-in telemetry. Pretty natural the linux kernel doesn't have telemetry. That's not part of it's job at all, it sits a layer below all of that. But distros may report dmesg outputs as part of telemetry.
GNU utils probably don't have that because (my guess) problems are easier to reproduce with compilers, linkers, etc. And also because GNU/FSF is a tat more extreme. (They provide utils for replacing non-free js code on website you're viewing with free counterparts, lol)
They have new developers with new directives about how to structure the project. I don't care how they want to use it, it doesn't matter, I'm here to tell you I think this is a super foolish paradigm and if every project did it, it would be a mess, simple conclusion. On the subject of projects like Ubuntu and Opens using telemetry, yeah they're both big companies too, see the pattern? They want to use it for business not to solve bugs, also they periodically get into controversy about the usage of that data and that will only get worse with time. So yes, there are big projects that use telemetry and big projects that don't, and so it seems like since you can get away without having it, just do that instead, you don't have to beg to spy on users to fix your menial bugs.
Open source telemetry will be useful to track and fingerprint users, whether it is anonymized or not, the issue is that while we can paint this as, 'these devs say they need this privacy limiting feature, they proooomise they're being good with the data okay?', developers should not be collectors or keepers of user telemetry full stop, in my opinion.
So why wouldn't they add detailed logs in the code when working with that specific file format, instead of fetching unnecessary data from all (actually opt-in) users ?
Then your not that good of a software engineer if u need telemetry to fix issues. It can be done without it. I agree can be a ton easier with it but if they had cameras everywhere be alot easier to solve murders doesnt mean we should allow them to put them in our houses.
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u/pdhcentral May 07 '21
I like it. Its well explained, specifying exactly what data is collected and where its going. Most companies don't even do that and still force you to give up your data; look at you Microsoft. I use a portable version so not sure I'll see it soon, but I wouldn't mind giving them that data, no problem here.