Back in LXF278 we reported on how Audacity, the open-source audio editor, was acquired by the Muse Group. Although promising to keep Audacity free and open, the company added optional telemetry to the application which would upload certain data (which is detailed in the Audacity sub-Reddit at https://bit.ly/lxf280audacityreddit) to thirdparties, including Google and Yandex.
This prompted a fierce backlash, and while the company swiftly backtracked and apologised (
https://bit.ly/lxf280audacityapol), the damage was done. It didn’t help that there was also a (now dropped) change to the privacy policy to prevent people under 13 from using the software, which many felt breached the GNU General Public Licence 2, which Audacity is published under. Fifty-plus forks of Audacity were then created, with one of the most popular being Tenacity (https://bit.ly/lxf280tenacity).