Audacity goes Poo-Poo...

Audacity, the once go-to solution for all sorts of audio edits small and large, has pretty much dug its own grave in terms of cred with the Free Software community: it's draconian and reeking of lawyerspeak privacy policy states they will downright collect and even share your information with law enforcement.

All for the noble purpose of... telemetry and "UX research."

Note that this is coming from a program that has zero need to ever have an internet connection in first place. For chrissakes, it's an audio editor, not a web browser or streamer. And yet, current and next versions will start collecting a myriad of personal data from you and your computer and sharing it with the new overlords of the WSM group in Kaliningrad, Russia with the following kicker: if law enforcement asks for it, they will share with them too.

Again, they will snitch on you with your data that they didn't even need to collect in the first place to work, but did so anyway because fuck-you-that's-why.

Well, so long, old friend. It was great while you were free and sane, and didn't think that "telemetry" would be something necessary (necessary for fucking what, anyway? An edge? In a world where software is free? Please...), but now I'm convinced I'll never use you again to record things and do quick edits in exchange of my privacy.

In the meantime, I'm out looking for an alternative to it. I'm mostly going to use it for recording podcasts and other audio, and maybe do simple cuts. Anybody has a good recommendation? I'm all ears!

There is an issue open on Github with a lot more of information on this update, including that it might actually even violate the GPL. Definitely recommend reading.