Thread by @textfiles

THE AUDACITY/MUSE PEOPLE HAVE COME ROARING BACK WITH A TOTAL OWNAGE OF THE CONCERNS I'VE BEEN MENTIONING

just kidding, they posted a note on a github thread that they're going to massage it a tad

github.com/audacity/audac…

I'm just one stupid little pony in this horse race, so everyone coming in to discuss this is going to go face deep or leaf off depending on their little bit of what matters to them. Let's just quickly restate what I'm going off about.

I said "RIP Audacity" when it got bought.

Now, Tantacrul ("project lead", now "design lead" of Audacity) went a little extra at me, in a way that says "I'm probably not the best person to have defending all this", so it got my interest, and people can attest to what it's like when you have my interest (and attention).

Fundamentally, the pitch for "We Bought Audacity" is "Great News. We Bought Audacity From The Maintainers. We're Going to Make All Sorts of Improvements. This Is Amazing News" with a dash of "Boy, We Sure Avoided A Crisis of Maintenance And Persistence With This Acquisition".

My issue is that they're building off Audacity's "Brand", which, if I may boil it down, is "open and free audio editor that is a little clunky but gets the job done and has a very small footprint and even cool filters for the audio you're editing".

Cute, popular, 20 years old.

It's incredibly tricky, then, to pivot to where you KEEP that fanbase/userbase AND then start doing ENTIRELY NORMAL THINGS THAT COMPANIES NOW DO WITH MODERN SOFTWARE, which is where we get the confusion and rage and misdirection now.

Muse would have to be careful.

They aren't.

For the new folks in the room - as the Angel of Death, I stand at the transition point of when works and worlds, communities and allegiances fall apart. Greed, decay, evolution, acquisition, divestment... call it what you want. That's my domain and that's what I react to.

I don't particularly care about what happens next, the "thoughts and prayers" of the new company, the wasteland or blossoming garden that rises from the ashes. I just point out the fire and work with people to save that moment for the future.

archiveteam.org

The reason I call "RIP Audacity" is because they're going to Do The Things Companies Do To Software To Make Money Off It, and that will kill the original expressions of Audacity that made it so popular. In doing so, they will (probably) make money from it and support it better.

Since apparently Muse both wants the cake (the reputation and wonder of Audacity) and to eat it too (modify all aspects of the program into choices Audacity would never have made), a rebrand is in order. Therefore, I officially call "new audacity" by its proper brand: EARBALLS.

My prediction, which has come true twice and will continue to, is EARBALLS will make choices reflecting "proper maintenance" of a modern commercial software project (phones home, has gold support, encourages cloud usage or service) with a faded "Audacity" sticker slapped on it.

The "Privacy" policy situation of the weekend shows this to a T. As privacy law experts were quick to point out, it's a perfectly fine privacy policy, ASSUMING IT IS A MODERN NEW PIECE OF COMMERCIAL AUDIO SOFTWARE. No 13 year olds? Law Enforcement Can Raw Dog Us? We Collect Info?

But EARBALLS was in huge use by schools and children. It now explicitly says nah, fam, keep kids away. This is the sort of stuff that happens when the new company is completely divorced from what made the original project succeed.

A small and growing set of privacy lawyers have looked at EARBALLS and said "Well, this is a pretty good and standard privacy statement." I'm sure it is, to you. The same way this is a really well-built, properly level and solid parking lot.

Which used to be a meadow.

Anyway, EARBALLS is going to keep being EARBALLS and call itself Audacity, and this latest whopper has inspired others to make an Audacity that will call itself something else.

Might I suggest EARBALLS FREE.

github.com/cookiengineer/…

Anyway, Happy 4th of July, which is ANOTHER great time as long as you don't look at it too hard or think too much about it.

Jason Scott, signing off