In response to the reckless actions promoting telemetry by Muse Group, which acquired the intellectual property and trademarks associated with Audacity, the Sartox Free Software organization has started developing a fork of the Audacity audio editor in the Audacium project, free from the code related to data collection and transmission of telemetry.
In addition to removing questionable code that performs network calls (telemetry transmission and crash reports, update checks), the Audacium project also aims to refactor the codebase for easier understanding and to facilitate participation in development for newcomers. The project will also work on expanding functionality by adding features requested by users, which will be implemented in accordance with community wishes.
Simultaneously, another fork of Audacity has been created — 'temporary-audacity', which has retained the original name for now but is in the process of selecting a different name since Audacity is a trademark of Muse Group. The fork is founded by Christoph Martens.
The temporary-audacity project is planned to be developed as a clone of the Audacity codebase, stripped of changes deemed questionable by the community. For instance, the code will be devoid of telemetry transmission, crash reports, and other network activity. Eight developers have already joined the effort to contribute to temporary-audacity, with 10 pull requests and 35 suggestions for changes submitted.
Meanwhile, representatives of Muse Group attempted to dispel concerns that arose following the publication of new privacy policies. It is claimed that suspicions of bad intentions are groundless and stem from unclear wording in the text without the necessary clarifications and explanations (the text of the rules will be rewritten). Main points:
- Muse Group does not and will never sell or transfer to third parties any data collected through telemetry.
- The stored data is limited to information about the IP address, OS version, and CPU type, and optionally, reports containing error information. IP address data is anonymized with no possibility of recovery within 24 hours after receipt.
- Only the information noted in the previous point may be provided at the request of law enforcement agencies, the court, and government bodies. No additional data, apart from what is listed above, is collected for any purpose. Information about IP addresses may only be transferred upon receipt of a request within 24 hours; after this time, the data is permanently deleted. Information is provided at the request of the court or law enforcement agencies only if a formal request is received in jurisdictions where the company operates, and this is a standard practice for all companies.
- The privacy rules do not apply to the use of the program in offline mode. The publication of this document is necessitated by compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, as the upcoming release of Audacity is expected to include features related to obtaining information about user IP addresses. Specifically, Audacity 3.0.3 will add an automatic update delivery feature that sends requests to check for a new version and transmits reports on problems from the program (by default, the sending of crash reports is disabled, but can be optionally activated by the user).
Source: opennet.ru
