 Hey, it's Anfa and this is a little newsflash Lifestream as you might have heard audacity has been recently acquired by a new company called Muse group and the youtuber named Oh, what's his name? Tantacrule Has made a video where with a thumbnail saying I have just joined audacity What I think really should be the title is my company just bought audacity He's previously also joined the Previously as previously like I know it was two years ago two years ago where he Started working with Muse score developers to help Push the software forward I believe they're proposed him to join them when he made a video criticizing new score and showing what the bad things and the Good things about new scores these are interface and now it's audacity and When I saw that I was pretty excited and a lot of people were and but then something weird happened And that is on audacity's github project. There is a new pure pull request titled basic telemetry for the audacity and It was opened four days ago and it has 926 comments and When I saw that I thought well that sounds like a bad joke and Yeah, the current state of this appear request is like it has been changed some a few times because of the replies Because the replies and the reaction of the community was pretty Violent and I think that's to be expected So right now they say dear all due to the large amount of worry about this PR which we completely understand We want to clarify exactly what is going on telemetry is strictly optional and disabled by default No data is shared unless you choose to opt in and enable telemetry Telemetry only works in the builds made by github cl from the official repo repo The telemetry URLs are only defined there if you are compiling audacity from source We will provide a CMake option to enable the telemetry code. This option will be turned off by default That sounds pretty okay, but let's say you want to enable telemetry Because you want to help Them identify what options in audacity what functions are used the most and you want them to be able to use that information to make audacity better Then your data will be sent to Google and the index because they're using Google analytics So blah blah blah Regarding the concerns about the choice of providers we do not incorporate cross-site tracking limiting the ability to identify the user uh By both both Google and the index the index will only receive the application opened event to help us estimate the size of the user base Google would only received only only just this session start and end events Errors for debugging file formats used for import and export OS and audacity versions and the use of effects Generators and analysis tools to prioritize future improvements pretty much anything you click on audacity except for editing And like you know changing volumes of tracks is gonna be sent to Google We will consider replacing Google any index with another service if we find that one that fulfills all our requirements Thanks for the suggestions and keep them coming. Yes, there's been a lot of Suggestions from the community to use different providers for such stuff Because there are Truly open-source ways to do telemetry, but Google analytics and the index are not one of them Just to reiterate telemetry is completely optional, of course it is optional But then if we want to use if we want to help audacity grow then we We are feeding the Google behemoth with the data because their business is just knowing stuff about people and that's like You like Google already knows too much about it. So also There's also there but you know that it's not just the problem that they are like originally want to use Google Analytics and Yandex. There's also technical problems, which I don't fully understand because I'm not a programmer But technical people has rights concerns about that they are using like they're not gonna be using the system provided version of Libcurl and they're gonna be providing their own version of Libcurl Why I don't know they explain this to address the concerns about the use of private library versions The largest part of this poll request is a networking layer built on top of Libcurl This library is chosen as it is an industry standard for cross-platform networking is exceptionally tested and revived be interviewed by industry experts Later on top of it aka a Lib network manager means meant to simplify the development of future Features Libcurl is used without any patches It's possible to use the self-system provided version of the library available in distributions and we will double-check if this works as expected Double-check that this works as expected Original PR description. So this is what they posted This provides basic telemetry basic to me. That's this is basic My definition of basic telemetry is oh someone run at our application. Oh it crashed That's a basic telemetry in my book and but To them pretty much clicking on anything is is considered to be basic stuff So I don't know what what is detailed telemetry by These standards Blah blah blah. Yeah, and you can see the sum up summary is pretty pretty simple here It's 3,200 downvotes on this PR Like I I'm really not surprised that the community is very concerned about this and I am very concerned about this myself Young Bernhardt comments, but Google is professional for analytics tools. Okay, maybe it is but they are they have bought a Free and open source project and they claimed to be keeping it open source free and open source and They need to follow like the spirit of free and open source software and the community of people using audacity Don't think Google is a good Tool to do your analytics in free and open source software and yet might have Convenience tools and I'm sure I'm sure they did this out of convenience and not of like Having any you know, it's not like Google is paying them to provide you information. I was ridiculous. Google is not the Google is just paying people with providing free services so they feed it with its data and I feed Google with my data to it unfortunately But I don't want to be feeding Google any data when I'm using free and open source software. I'm like, yeah Blah blah blah for hours ago. No, these are pretty new four days ago. Basically, there's an anemormous Wow, have you been cleaned up? I don't see all of the comments. That's pretty weird There's been a lot of comments That's pretty weird There's been a lot of comments and some very very nasty ones, which I don't think is like Like wishing people death over this is really a stupid But yeah, I Trust that news group is going to reconsider their choices of implementing this and Find the ways that the free and open source community will approve But they may not They can do whatever they want if they don't Figure out ways to do this the right way Respecting people's choice to use a Providers like Google and Yandex then What's gonna happen is audacity will be forked and people like me and are people who are Concerned about this and want to use free and open source software without Telling Google about it every time you you type in farts on your keyboard Are gonna use that version the problem is that I think realistically They may not give it Give they may not be very concerned because we as the open source community are probably a little very small part of the Audacity's user base. I think Audacity is being used by millions of people and probably like 10% of them even know what free and open source software means And I think the new audacity maintainers don't really know Like the real question that emerges from all of this is does news group even understand what the free software movement is all about and I hope the answer is not yet because if the answer is yes, then after that, yes We need to add but they don't give a shit Well, yeah, I really hope we can resolve this in a In a peaceful manner that That the new audacity maintainers from news group can review their choices and implement this telemetry in a Sane and free and open source friendly way Because I would like to use audacity and I would like to help them improve it and I'm excited to see what they're gonna Do with it or I was excited to see what they're gonna do with it Because it's users and its user interface is admittedly clunky and of course it is simple But also there's a lot that could be done to make it better Yet if the first thing they want to do is make me tell Google every time I'll run audacity actually no Yandex then Not really. Okay, and even it. Yeah, it is opt-in, but I Like do I really want To run software that that's gonna Phone Google when when I want to help the developers. No, I don't I Really hope we can resolve this and that the news group developers are going to figure this out and Use some tools that care like that they can host themselves and yeah, maybe it's not gonna be as convenient But this is a free and open source project and people expect some some like standard of respecting like people's privacy and They are we are a bit a Bit paranoid about huge data-eating corporations like Google and Most of us are trying to limit the amount of data we feed to Google not increase that amount of data And sure we might say that well, this is not gonna have too much impact because for every 1% of people who are aware that this is a problem There's 99% people who don't know it as a problem and don't care. So it's not gonna change anything but You know every change starts with something small. So I think it is worth paying attention to this and The wrong news group Yeah, if you have the time and want to have some fun, I don't know or like learn more about this You may go to audacity's GitHub repository into pull requests and read into that So maybe refrain from commenting anymore because there's already way too much stuff here and I think And I think Everything that has been said in this should should have been said in this Fred already has been said Even so people are commenting every hour still Even though it's been four days. Oh Yeah, also, I'm gonna I think I'm gonna read some chat and Answer some questions if I can did it because Yeah, they probably did it because just because it was easy to do. Yeah, I fully I fully agree I think they just did it because it was convenient but the thing is that if you are into free and opens our software if you're running Linux if you are into Privacy and you understand the the dangers of Tracking users everywhere and advertisers knowing about you more than your spouse or or mother then Doing something like this is a huge red flag and to me the fact that they push publish this pull request Pull request, which means hey, here's code. Just click. Okay, and we're gonna merge it and it goes in into the next build shows that they Don't really have the mindset of a free and open source project which is worrying because They like tranta cruel in his video tantra cruel I tranta. I don't know. Sorry sorry for miss mispronouncing your your nickname Stated that I like they stated that this project will stay free and open source and they're gonna work on Ways to improve it for everyone But this is strictly Opposed to the free and open source way of doing things which is like what like You put Google tracking in free and open source software and you think that's gonna be just fine with us So yeah, some people in the comments Which I've been reading before mentioned that this should be just published on a wiki article in the Google or like it should be published as a as a proposal and it should be discussed with the community how it's going to be implemented and all the other stuff but It was just a pull request. So as it's it now, we don't know what's gonna happen with this. Maybe they'll back off and rework this I hope they will But who knows Looks like young bernard has a lot of a lot of interesting points So he says advanced telemetry is mouse tracking click heatmap media metadata full hardware configuration alright, okay Yeah, that's just full-on surveillance and I think doing something like that on like regular users without like Very very explicit Explanation on what the program is going to do is Fucking crazy and like doing stuff like that In my opinion is only Acceptable if you're basically hiring testers and you're telling them, okay, we're gonna be tracking all your mouse clicks and what you do and Everything and that's okay in this environment, but like If you say like just put a window. Hey, do you want to send anonymous data? Okay, and it just tracks every fucking click you do No, that is not okay And the under that says self hosting is expensive Okay, but you know what? This is probably gonna this may turn into a PR crisis for them. So I don't know what's more expensive like $5 a month is probably bias rent them enough VPS power to do this Maybe $20 a month. So I don't think it's really a point. The point is convenience. I think they did this out of convenience and Yep, doing things the right way is less convenient always But it doesn't matter Young Bernard says heat map is a really useful data for example to see where people click to make a better interface Oh, yeah, that's great. But to do this Like I think something. Yeah, I think so they could do something like that But first thing it would be it would need to be a special build Which is like marked. This is a Heatmap testing build if you want to help us download this and will track every click you make and also not send it for Google and Then I'm okay. I'm okay. I could even use that build and help them do it just Be memorable asks what did I miss you can replay? Okay Also in Bernat says I'm fucking you stream to 100 plus people without Google YouTube I think I could There are open source self-hostable things. I've been using peer tube a bit. It's not ready. So and that's kind of not the point because You know, I have joined this platform here YouTube Knowing what I'm putting myself into and I have to take this and I'm taking this Because it's a platform that lets me talk to people and lets me spread the information about free and open source software While I wait for free and open source alternatives to match the feature Standard and allow me to provide a Sensible alternative and yeah, I've been doing some tests on open source platforms Namely peer tube peer tube isn't really yet ready yet for live streaming, but there are some other ways like I Don't know There's a bunch of them I haven't tested much but there's options and you know that the argument that but you're using Google anyway is Isn't valid because I I do this like This is a conscious choice on my side and everyone who came here Also made a conscious choice to create an account on YouTube knowing it's owned by Google And they know that they are being tracked here Everything we do here is tracked and we are feeding Google But when you run a piece of free and open source software, you do not expect to be feeding Google And that is not okay because they're not telling you that this data is being sent to Google in the dialogue proposed here, they's like Right like I've seen programs that do this kind of stuff open source program does do the kind of stuff and What is the right thing to do is? Mmm, I think or one way to do is that the program creates Opens up a website Creating a github ticket for example or a forum thread and it fills out some data I'd collected in your system for you and you can review exactly every single bit of that information before you post it So it's fully transparent and there is no third party involved. It's just you the platform that the developers used to host and develop their software or discuss their development and the developers and not Some Google or Yandex server in the middle that you are not aware of Like I'm okay with using Google, but when I'm aware of it I'm not okay with Google being utilized inside of free and open source software that I use and I have no idea for examples, I maybe it's not relevant but Ardor the digital audio workstation that I use and I teach Sometime ago has added a set of proprietary plugins developed by Harrison Who are creating a? mmm a DAW called Harrison mix bus which is based on Ardor But they have their proprietary DSP inside and a different mixer interface that emulates their analog consoles and they've been very Nice and provided some proprietary plugins that they use in their DAW Mix bus so it can be used in Ardor as well But these plugins are not open source So in their binary code in practice like there could be anything they could be tracking me if if around these plugins I have no idea. That's why I have been fighting other developers to make it optional to install these because they were just Installed you had no idea. They were just there You download a piece of open source software which advertised pre and open source software And you don't and you have no idea that there is a chunk of proprietary code inside Which could be doing whatever because you the developers even of the software were not able to fully Review it because they don't have access to the source code. That's not okay I am okay with doing things like that when I'm fully aware of it And I guess a lot of people will be okay with installing these Harrison XT plugins But I don't want to and they've added our developers since added an option to make the Installing these plugins optional on Linux. I don't know if they added the option to make this optional on Windows yet But I think they should because like I know that people running Windows are probably less Less tuned to be less aware of such issues and they won't mind probably but We are the free and open source software community. We should be taking care of people even if they don't realize the danger Let me read the comments or the chat Neon ray tracer the tracking will be a conscious choice. You need to enable it while building audacity by default from this PR Won't be tracking any of anything. Yes, it won't be tracking anything By default, but if I want to help them the only way I can do this using their telemetry is For Google if this goes in as it is right now and I want to help them and I would like to enable this But it's not anonymous really because Google will know your IP and Google has enough data on you and Your profile That they will be able to stitch this together because they will see that you're also watching audacity tutorials right now or browsing free sound and uploading audio and whatever they Google knows too much and If they can just swap out these proprietary data hoarding services out to something open and Approved by the frequent and open source community, then okay Yeah, sure I want to help approve a nasty just not for these companies and Yeah Also, if they would like to do heat mapping and you know tracking every click I'm also okay, but it needs to be a separate build and It also doesn't cannot go through such services like I would like to help them and like Produce a heat map for for from my work. Sure. Just not for Google Alright Okay, I think I'll wrap this up. I think I've said everything I had to say Yeah, I this is a big oof on the part of muse group And I really hope they learned a little the lesson and that they listen to different open source community I hope we can keep this civilized Please no death threats over this like that's not worth it. It's just a piece of software, okay? The worst-case scenario we will fork it and we will be just porting over changes. I know it sucks and It's it would be really sad that audacity after what it is 30 years would go this route But it's not the end of the world Still I am hopeful and I believe I trust that the muse group can can learn from this can take the best Parts of the feedback that have been provided discard the the toxic shit Sorry and use the helpful feedback and understand. Why are we so concerned about doing telemetry this way? I Banana kid 111 asks does this have to do with the tantacruel taking over? Absolutely. It's pretty much The result of him taking over like this is like the first change we see after he took over Yep, also, I've learned that muse score that the program that I've been working on before also has similar stuff in But I just didn't know So I Think we need to talk about this muse group. We need to talk about this Okay, thank you all for watching and I Hope it's all gonna be okay. I hope you're having a nice weekend and let's hope for the best Also huge thanks to everyone who is supporting me on patreon and libera pay these guys are awesome If any of you find my tutorials useful, please go there you can give me a buck or two if not just enjoy and I hope to see you next time