RFC: phone home

[Dirk Hohndel]

Request for comments...

I'm really curious to find out how many people are actually using
Subsurface and one which platforms. But of course with it being open
source that nearly impossible.

Unless the software has a "phone home" feature. In which case one could
at least establish a lower bound.

There are obvious privacy issues with this and lots of people absolutely
hate this idea so the only way this would be even remotely acceptable is
an opt-in.

What do people think about this rough idea (post 4.1, don't worry)

When Subsurface starts it checks the settings for a phone home key that
contains version and date it last called home.
if   a) the key doesn't exist
  or b) there current version is different and the date is > 30 days ago
Subsurface opens a dialog along these lines:
"Hi, thanks for using Subsurface. The developers would love to get a
better idea how many people are using Subsurface and especially on which
OS are they doing so. Would you mind if we sent the following data to
the Subsurface server: OS, Version?
No other information will be transmitted, seriously check the source.
This is done one time only - if you use a new version we'll ask you
again. And if you say no, we won't ask you again (well, on this machine,
your response to this data is stored locally in the settings)."
(it would of course show "osx, 4.1" or "linux, 4.0.97" instead of "OS,
Version") - and we could of course include slightly more detailed info:

Mac OS 10.9
Windows 8.1
Fedora 20

Would you say 'yes' to this question? Should this be implemented /
phrased differently? Anyone vehemently opposed to the idea? Other
suggestions?

/D