The corruption of Audacity

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sunrat
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by sunrat »

I approve this deviation from the topic. 8) :mrgreen:
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

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sunrat wrote:I approve this deviation
Did you just admit to being a deviant?

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It feels good to finally get that off of my chest (and on to the throne, where Hello Kitty is most suitable for viewing).

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Re: The corruption of Audacity

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Re: The corruption of Audacity

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j_e_f_f_g wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 5:47 am
sunrat wrote:I approve this deviation
Did you just admit to being a deviant?
Who isn't? :D Hello Kitty is approved for deviants:
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by Largos »

Guess they didn't want to wait even a month before the next controversy

https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/932
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by sunrat »

Largos wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 11:03 am Guess they didn't want to wait even a month before the next controversy

https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/932
I just wasted too many minutes reading that. To be pragmatic and ignoring many of the naive comments about philosophical aspects regarding any threat to its current open source status, the bottom line for me is it will still be under GPL.
Audacity seriously needs UI makeover and I use it very little because of that. I tried compiling v3.0.2 a few days ago as no Linux binaries are available and aborted when I reached the bit about having to also compile WxWidgets.
I found a lot of things I used it for long ago can also be done more efficiently with SoX. I just tried KWave on the suggestion of a comment in the above link and it has a much cleaner UI although much more limited feature set.
Audacity is never going to rival Wavelab or some similar editors, but if it stays free, GPL, and gets a facelift, it could still be relevant.
This discussion may be another storm in a teacup similar to the telemetry one. I hope so.
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by merlyn »

Frank Zappa wrote:There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
Maybe I have a warped sense of humour but I laughed through most of the GitHub thread linked above. The crushing weight of boring business descends on something that doesn't have a business model, doesn't have marketing and doesn't try to lever a buck out of anything or anyone within a mile radius.

@sunrat The naivete seemed to me to be in the posts from Tantacrul and Muse representatives.
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by Loki Harfagr »

Really wishing some folks may update and reboot either ReZound or Sweep, they were the real stuff for some unreason but just froze in the past :D
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

sunrat wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 1:14 pm it will still be under GPL.
The current version, yes. But their cla grants them the right to use the code "for any purpose". Any purpose would include using it to spin off a commercial version to which they add their own closed source additions (without modifying the gpl parts they don't own, or replacing those parts with their own).

Especially troubling is that the company appears to be paying current/past contributers to sign this cla (via some sort of '"for hire" agreement), and having everyone sign non-disclosure agreements so they can't reveal details about that. I smell corporate lawyers.

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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by Basslint »

Time to develop an alternative! Here is a nice library to do it:

https://github.com/Tracktion/tracktion_engine
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by milo »

Over the 20 years I have been using FOSS, I have seen a few important projects turn to the dark side and switch to a GPL-incompatible license. If the project is important enough then there is always an immediate fork and the major distros switch to it in their next major release. Do you remember how quickly XFree86 became irrelevant when Xorg forked them? And OpenOffice (which IMHO had the better name) became LibreOffice overnight.

The question here is how important Audacity is, and I would say that in the Linux world it's not very. It is a convenient, works-out-of-the-box, lowest-common-denominator, infuriatingly simplistic kind of tool, and its offline effects are fun to play with (Paulstretch and reverse are my favorites), but at the end of the day it's just not that essential. Not compared the the X windows system or the only full-featured office suite.

Audacity is probably more important on Windows, where millions of unsavvy folks use it to churn out podcasts. It is the go-to tool for that. Audacity is probably hoping to monetize that huge user base, and they may succeed to a degree, but I suspect they're about to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

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milo wrote: Tue Jun 01, 2021 2:56 am The question here is how important Audacity is, and I would say that in the Linux world it's not very. It is a convenient, works-out-of-the-box, lowest-common-denominator, infuriatingly simplistic kind of tool, and its offline effects are fun to play with (Paulstretch and reverse are my favorites), but at the end of the day it's just not that essential. Not compared the the X windows system or the only full-featured office suite.
I agree with you but then, what is the alternative? There is certainly a niche of users for which Ardour is too complex and Sox is too hard to use. Sadly the other lightweight audio editors are either unmaintained or too limited in features.
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by prokoudine »

Loki Harfagr wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 4:52 pm Oh, if only ReZound could have been followed/forked/updated!
https://github.com/ddurham2/rezound

Latest commit on May 17, 2020.
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Re: The corruption of Audacity

Post by Kott »

prokoudine wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 9:52 am
Loki Harfagr wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 4:52 pm Oh, if only ReZound could have been followed/forked/updated!
https://github.com/ddurham2/rezound

Latest commit on May 17, 2020.
https://github.com/ddurham2/rezound/commits/dev/qt5

May 24, 2021
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