RFC: phone home

[Tim Wootton]

Hi Dirk,

I know my contribution to subsurface has been tiny compared to most 
here, but here's my 2p (or 2c if you prefer), feel free to ignore it, 
but you did ask:

Let me start with, I'm not a fan of phone home. I'm sure there's way 
more of it goes on elsewhere than any of us are really aware of. If it 
is going to happen here, then your up-front approach in letting the user 
know exactly what and when, and giving them the choice is absolutely the 
right thing to do imho.

As to the data gathered, does it really help to know the distribution of 
users by OS, after all if it turned out that 1 platform accounted for 
only 1% of users would anyone consider dropping or diverting effort away 
from it? If not, why does it matter? Regarding the total number of 
users, I'd imagine the number of downloads from the website would be 
vaguely indicative in much the same way as responses from a 
self-selected "phone home" sample would be vaguely indicative.

cheers,

Tim


On 30/04/14 21:50, Dirk Hohndel wrote:
>
> 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
>
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