Audacity Has Become Spyware!?

One of the most significant open source software's advantages is its openness, which offers many other advantages, including the freedom to usage, security by examination as well as flexibility. This is largely due to the open source-friendly licenses these applications employ, but occasionally some one comes along and attempts to implement changes that upset the users' community and developers. Sometimes, the changes may also be unlawful. This is the case with Audacity, one the most open source and well-known softwares which now falls under an extremely intrusive privacy policy.

 
The controversy started just a few months back when Audacity was purchased by Muse Group, the company behind other popular music software such as MuseScore and MuseScore, both of which are open source, as is Ultimate Guitar. At present, Audacity remains open source (and isn't able to be transformed into a proprietary program in its current version) however this doesn't mean the Muse Group can't do some quite destructive modifications. These changes take place as a result of the privacy policy, which was recently updated days back, and a policy which allows the company to collect the data of users.

It's a desktop app with no web-based functionality at all, Audacity never had any requirement for "phone home" in the first in the first. Its privacy policies now state that the company will collect data , but it does so in a way that's general and vague, likely due to design. For instance, it states that it gathers information for law enforcement purposes, but does not define what type of information is taken into account.

There are other concerns about the data storage, that is stored on servers located in the USA, Russia, and the European Economic Area. IP addresses, for instance are recorded in a way that is identifiable for a single day, then cleaned and stored on servers for up to a year. This new policy also bans those under 13 to use the software and is, as FOSS Post states is in contravention of GPL license which Audacity employs.

The community of open source developers was naturally irritated by the changes. However, Audacity is open source software and is likely to be adopted by the community, and then forked in another direction, possibly with an alternative name. It will be left to Muse Group to develop Audacity independently instead of leveraging (and profit from) of the community's efforts.