source audio editor audacity has spyware

Source audio editor audacity has spyware install#
Source audio editor audacity has spyware software#

Muse Group promised to revise their plans for adding telemetry to Audacity, and judging by the new Privacy Policy, it seems they’ve done an admirable job of addressing all of the issues brought up by the community. The clause about working with unnamed law enforcement agencies has been deleted, as has the particularly troubling age requirement.Ĭredit where credit is due.

Source audio editor audacity has spyware install#

It’s further explained in the GitHub post that the automatic update feature only applies to official binary builds of Audacity, meaning it will be disabled for Linux users who install it through their distribution’s package repository. The new Privacy Policy makes it clear that Audacity won’t be collecting any user data, and what little personally identifiable information Muse Group gets from the application when it automatically checks for an update (namely, the client’s IP address) isn’t being stored. That sounds reasonable enough, but why where these same teams not consulted before releasing such a spectacularly ill-conceived draft? Project lead Martin Keary, better known online as Tantacrul, says the team had to consult with various legal teams before they could release the revised policy. But it’s still difficult to understand why Muse Group publicly posted such a poorly constructed version of the document in the first place. Ultimately, the new Privacy Policy bears little resemblance to the earlier draft.

It seems much of the problem can be attributed to an over-analysis of the situation with the company inserting provocative boilerplate protections (such as a clause saying users must be over the age of 13) that simply weren’t necessary. The announcement also came with an admission that many of the key elements from the draft version of the Privacy Policy were poorly worded and confusing. In a recent post to Audacity’s GitHub repository, Muse Group unveiled the revised version of their much maligned Privacy Policy. An already precarious situation has only been made worse by a series of PR blunders Muse Group has made over the last several months.īut for a change, it seems things might be moving in the right direction.

Source audio editor audacity has spyware software#

The company says their goal is to modernize the 20 year old GPLv2 program and bring it to a larger audience, but many in the community have questioned whether the new managers really understand the free software ethos. Regular readers will likely be aware of the considerable debate over changes being made to the free and open source audio editor Audacity by the project’s new owners, Muse Group.