The recently purchased open source audio publisher Audacity has been accused of being too concerned about its users’ data and violating the terms of its open source license.
At the beginning of July, its new owner put a page on the Internet from Terms of Service It details, among other things, how Audacity’s user data will be managed.
several surprise points, Notice Phospot – who mentioned this page among the first – when we talk about an application that has no other functions than allowing recording and editing of audio content. Without further ado or needing to know more about who is using it.
Audacity brand and app Sold last May Musa group, headquartered in Cyprus and owned by the Russian company WSM . group. Audacity has joined forces with a handful of music apps including MusicScore, Ultimate Guitar, StaffPad, MuseClass, and ToneBridge.
For now, Audacity works for free as in the past and without the need to create a user account or register in any way. Phospot Surprised, however, that the publisher of Audacity provides the collection of technical and personal data. This is justified by the development of the application and the defense of the interests of the company. The version, operating system name, and IP address are thus collected to determine the user’s country, processor type, operating errors, and crash history.
To this is added above all the possibility of transferring ” Data necessary for law enforcement and requests from authorities (if any) without specifying the nature of the data involved.
The data is also said to be stored within the European Economic Union but sometimes may be shared with the publisher’s headquarters in Russia as well as with its board of directors in the United States. Phospot It also indicated that a user’s IP addresses would remain identifiable for 24 hours before going through the hashing system.
Then there’s this curiosity that the software is prohibited from being used by minors under the age of 13, while the GPL license that governs Audacity’s source code places no restrictions on use, in the broad sense.
The new owner has made no secret of his desire to add paid options in order to dust off and make this profitable app now 21 years old, which is offered for free and developed on open source code. Perhaps in anticipation of this evolution towards another economic model, these terms of use have appeared and are now in force.
The code with which Audacity works remains open source, however, its new owner does not own the rights, simply exploiting the Audacity trademark and software. It is technically possible that another publisher or group of developers will continue to develop this code and present it as a competing application, while Audacity will work its own way. These Terms of Use have in any case given rise to some discussion about reddit And the github.
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