Audacity has new administration

[Bone Baboon]

# Contents

* Audacity's new administration
* Controversial Changes to Audacity
* Audacity Forks
* Guix and Audacity

# Audacity's new administration

Audacity has new administration.  Based on these announcements Audacity
is now part of Muse Group.

May 3 2021 this announcement was made on Audacity's website
<https://www.audacityteam.org/audacity-musescore-announcement/>

April 30 2021 this announcement was made by the new lead of audacity:

Invidious link
<https://invidious.silkky.cloud/watch?v=RMWNvwLiXIQ>
YouTube link
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMWNvwLiXIQ>

# Controversial Changes to Audacity

Muse Group has made several controversial changes to Audacity.

Three controversial changes were:

* The introduction of telemetry
  <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/pull/835>
  <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889>

* The introduction of a contributor license agreement
  <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/932>

* A new privacy policy
  <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1213>
  <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1236>
  <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1232>
  <https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/1225>

The introduction of telemetry has been discussed here
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-05/msg00246.html>.

# Audacity Forks

The controversial changes to Audacity by Muse Group has motivated
several Audacity forks.

One example of a fork is <https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity>.
That fork gives this rational for it's existence
<https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity#why-did-this-project-fork-audacityaudacity>.
Which includes some of the links in the to the Controversial Changes to
Audacity section above.

It is probably to early to tell which if any of the Audacity forks are
going to be maintained over an extended period of time.

# Guix and Audacity

Guix packages the 2.4.2 version of Audacity.

Looking at /gnu/packages/audio.scm the source code repository Guix uses
for audacity is <https://github.com/audacity/audacity> which is now
controlled by Muse Group.

Based on Audacity release information
<https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Category:Release_Notes> version
2.4.2 was released on 26 June 2020.  This is before Muse Group acquired
administrative control of Audacity some time between April 30 2021 and
May 3 2021.  So no action is currently required by Guix in regards to
it's Audacity package.

The most current version of Audacity before Muse Group acquired
administrative control of Audacity was version 3.0.2 which released on
19 April 2021.

Before the next update of the version of Audacity that Guix packages it
would probably be a good idea to reassess the situation with Muse
Group's Audacity and the Audacity forks.