Discussion
Wow, Audacity 4 is looking good! Breaks the stereotype of open source. 🎧
I'm hopeful for a new era of open source becoming pro: Blender, OBS, my new fav Kdenlive. I like GIMP and Inkscape, but not sure these are there yet. Any other examples of open source gone pro?
@dinosaur @inkscape has been much better than #illustrator for more than 15 years already!
@vvvvvilay @inkscape Yeah Inkscape is my go-to for any SVG editing, but I'm an open source zealot, I don't think I could convince my normie professional designer friends to switch. I even find Inkscape hard to use sometimes, but in my case I'm happy to put up with discomfort if it means supporting a good cause, not everyone is like this. Or have you been able to switch normie professional designers to Inkscape?
@dinosaur I'm given to understand that Audacity really can't be trusted anymore though. Opt out telemetry, that kind of thing.
It seems like people are switching to Tenacity instead these days.
@dinosaur have you followed the emmense drama that surrounded this basically corporate takeover of audacity for this to happen?
@liaizon No I'm mostly unaware, I was wondering about the connection to Muse with regards to the logo change, I saw some references on the website. Now I see some people on Mastodon have strong feelings. What are your feelings?
@liaizon Personally, I might even be okay with a corporate sponsorship / takeover of Audacity. 🙊
We're all aware of the path to enshittification caused by corporations in their products, but in this case wouldn't the GPL license apply a pressure to mitigate this? The work being done is still open, whether or not the corporate sponsor gets a reward via what is basically an ad. E.g. I still am grateful for Firefox in keeping alive the only web engine competitor to Chrome, despite their corporate interests. In this case, I don't see the Audacity v4 roadmap as being focused on their corporate interests, it seems focused on being a better audio editor.
Those who disagree can always fork, i.e. Tenacity, and the situation might even light a fire to contribute. Meanwhile developers need money to live, I've been involved with many open source projects (e.g. Scuttlebutt) that subsist on values more than money, it's not always a great time, mostly involves volunteers burning out.
@dinosaur Honestly, not a huge fan of it. I think Audacity's been getting gradually worse lately, not sure if this has anything to do with this YouTuber taking the helm or what. I don't like the new logo (why change it, and it looks nothing like anything it's supposed to represent either). Second, I don't like all the random online functionality. I do not want to connect my audio dot com account. I do not want to back my projects up to the cloud. You are audio software. I can replace you easily.
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