Audacity 4.0
Audacity 4 rebuilds the application interface on Qt and introduces many new quality-of-life improvements, including a new clip-editing model. Most Audacity 3 workflows remain available...
The reasons for forking Audacity were all valid but not necessarily important for the end user. It’s still GPL, you can still fork it and do whatever you want (GPL caveats apply).
CLA requirement for contributors (not uncommon in open source projects)
Adding telemetry and crash reporting (which is opt-in)
Privacy policy written to be on the safe side of regulatory compliance (understandable given corporate stewardship)
The reasons for forking Audacity were all valid but not necessarily important for the end user. It’s still GPL, you can still fork it and do whatever you want (GPL caveats apply).