That’s kinda the blessing and the curse of FOSS. You absolutely can fork the repo, remove the telemetry, and republish it as a new app.
But fragmentation is confusing, requires a lot of maintenance, and really I’m not sure it was worth it. Those who are particularly conscious about the telemetry can block it with a single line in /etc/hosts.
Distributions and open source maintainers looking out for their users, once again.
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/6c2e8a2377542d6722...
i write this as someone who's been involved in one too many debates about the perils of introducing telemetry to a commercial open source thing because "HN would tear us apart"
If it can fully run locally on my machine, I do not want it sending anything external.
Lastly, as an abused Firefox user, it seems that telemetry is only ever used to justify removing features I like.
If the removed features are only features you like, then they probably aren't doing things right... The one most relevant purpose for telemetry I see for Audacity is precisely preventing this from happening, meanwhile fostering a more vigorous growth of the repo by cutting off dead branches. Audacity is over 20 years of development of features, some of which we every now and again wonder if they're still used. Not knowing, we try our best maintaining these, which slows down Development, QA and Design in delivering features that are relevant now.
The original email appears to indicate they intended to contact CCP authorities. The inference I took is that they believed the developer was in China.
Later they stated that violation of law in Canada could result in revocation of visa.
So "threated to have someone deported" is maybe a stretch, "tortuted" is pretty untrue.
The github issue appears to show a pretty reasonable attempt by both parties to move forward.
1. https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5#issu...
Using a user’s computer to spy on them when they don’t want it to is extremely rude, in all cases, even if the surveillance data is thrown away and never used.
Developers who implement such features should be named and highlighted and should have trouble finding new jobs. It’s shady and unethical to make such software, doing so should be a black mark on one’s professional record, just like stealing. It is literally malware.
Your assumption that violating consent is ok as long as it isn’t “nefarious” is the problem.
