ADMIN & DEVELOPERS - IS THE WORK YOU DO UNPAID

Admin

ADMIN & DEVELOPERS - IS THE WORK YOU DO UNPAID?

It’s my understanding that it is.

Please, don’t view this as an intrusive question, being nosey or after anyone’s job.

if my understanding is correct, then one can only admire and respect the work all of you do.

I’ve been a supporter of Audacity since its inception.

Most of us have no idea how a program such as Audacity is built - yes built, brick by brick - component by component, and now, Audacity stands on its own two feet, having earned the respect of its millions of users.

It’s very easy to criticise and express dissatisfaction with the program. That being the case, perhaps I could suggest purchasing a similar program costing several hundred pounds (sterling).

Having done so with photo and desktop publishing software, I have reached the conclusion that “open source” is as good, if not better.

For many years, all of the development, documentation and support work was by unpaid enthusiasts in their “spare time”. As Audacity grew in popularity, a few key roles were subsidized with the payment of a stipend, though this was more of a token gesture rather than a wage. Earlier this year, Audacity gained financial backing from “musegroup” (https://mu.se/), who develop and support a number of popular music apps, some commercial and some open source. A key part of the deal with musegroup is that Audacity remains a free, open source app. Now that Audacity has the financial backing of musegroup, Audacity has been able to take on a few staff in paid roles, including development.

Audacity still has many volunteer contributors (including all the “staff” on this forum) that contribute in their spare time. The server and bandwidth costs of this forum are paid for by musegroup, but it remains a community resource.

Although still early days, we are now starting to see exciting new developments in Audacity - A couple of developments that I’m personally quite excited by include a new AI (artificial intelligence) tool for “source separation” (un-mixing multiple sound sources), and support for a much more recent version of FFmpeg (much requested here on this forum). There are also plans in the pipeline for real time effects, VST3 support, and many other new features.

Hi Steve

Wow - for once, I’m speechless!

:slight_smile: In a good way I hope.