> Personally I hate UI changes and I want Audacity to change as little as possible in that regard. It is not a tool that I use regularly so I want to be able to not use it for a year or two, get back to it and still find the same familiar interface.

And here is the beauty of non-web based software, you can guarantee that you always will! Same executable on your computer represents the same program launched, forever. Things don't change under the hood without you saying "yes", so if you want the UI to remain the same forever, you're welcome to. If you later want to upgrade, you can, but you'll never be forced to.

That would only work if I never wanted to change or update my system.

In practice, especially on Linux, binaries only work for specific distributions of specific major versions. It can be very difficult to get a binary to work a few years down the line.

Of course solutions like Appimage help quite a bit as software comes with most dependencies packaged inside but even then its not perfect. It will slow down the bit rot but not stop it.

In practice, on Windows, one can still use most things made 25 years ago. In actuality, I still use WinAmp 2.91 marked "Apr 16 2003" in the about screen. See also http://www.oldversion.com/ .

It's pretty simple to build audacity. If you're never upgrading then that's fine.

In theory, flatpaks will have perfect forwards compatibility, unless some breaking changed occur without them supporting the old format in a legacy way, which seems unlikely.

Except that "just don't upgrade" is a very bad idea.

Why?

Security patches, for one thing, right?

Genuine question: what security vulnerabilities could Audacity have that would make not upgrading a risk?

Many, many, MANY audio players have had exploitable buffer overflows.

But Audacity right now does everything you need and you are not processing untrusted source files, so why would you ever need to update?

On the other hand, lots of people encounter Audacity maybe for the first time and the UI might be unappealing or confusing.

I think there is space for both you who wants an "eternal" tool and the new user who might want something more apporachable.

There are many reasons why one would like to update Audacity also if it already does everything one needs, for example increased robustness and speed in newer versions if they provide it, and also new effects that simplify existing workflows.

Also compatibility with future hardware, aka bitrot.

Having seen many of his videos, I agree with you. Not that I'm against it, but under tantacrul, Audacity will likely become nearly unrecognizable. Many of us have a huge investment in the present, imperfect system. We should admit upfront this is a fork, and a separate maintenance effort for Audacity classic will be a separate project.