Audacity is now basically part of the Muse family, which is a for profit venture, with it's own - wait for it 🥁🥁🥁🥁 store front launcher

Nothing makes me hate music software (or games) more than yee old SaaS/DRM pile-on, especially when you add another goddamn launcher. I'm trying to lay low latency buffers here, not facilitate another UI stack and background processes. I nuke the printer spool, and you think I want more? I will download the cracked version, even if I own the damned software, to get rid of all that.

Jokes aside, considering the whole funding issue in the open source world, MuseHub (the "plugin boutique") takes a fairly common route in the audio software world, since pretty much every single one of these DAW, plugin or sample pack outfits have a storefront - or use one, if not several.

If say the Audacity we know is still free, but the add-ons cost money, that's fine. It's very "freemium", but as long as they don't remove VST3 or CLAP support, it's fairly harmless.

In regards to tracking, is it opt-out, opt-in, identifiable or anonymized telemetry? It's contentious, to say the least, but if it's a concern, you could always block domains - even though the average user would probably not concern themselves, and at that point I wonder if it's better than other creepy freemium models that are even more predatory.

Though it could be the type of telemetry used in most modern DRMs to confirm ownership by using plenty of CPU cycles and network communication to validate identity.

Because DRMs is the worst technology segment invented in all of modern history, and it needs to die in a fire - I swear * TO GOD* you do not need to hit several friggin domain many times a day, once is enough - in fact, once is too much! You can take your iLok and shove it. I paid for this software, and if I put a Jolly Roger in it, it's because your DRM drains my soul.

your launcher is bad and you should feel bad

I swear, this heckles my kekles sooo much.