There are less offensive ways [LWN.net]

There are less offensive ways

Posted Oct 12, 2006 1:53 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
Parent article: How many Fedora users are there?

This kind of tracking is going to get a hostile reception.

I suggest, instead, that the Fedora developers work with the users to design methods of information-gathering that will be more acceptable.

For example, as an alternative, that Fedora ask its users to register, and promote the effort as a way to show Red Hat management how important Fedora is to its users. Something like the Debian popcon is worth doing as well, as long as it is opt-in, not opt-out.

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There are less offensive ways

Posted Oct 12, 2006 3:27 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]

Something like the Debian popcon is worth doing as well, as long as it is opt-in, not opt-out.

Not sure if you meant to imply that Debian's popularity-contest system ("popcon") is opt-in, or merely that Red Hat/Fedora's "something like" should be, but, for the record:

Debian popcon is opt-in, not opt-out.

There are less offensive ways

Posted Oct 12, 2006 4:05 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Yes, I know that popcon is opt-in.

There are less offensive ways

Posted Oct 12, 2006 4:18 UTC (Thu) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link]

Something like the Debian popcon is worth doing as well, as long as it is opt-in, not opt-out.

I agree; both with the opt-in, rather than opt-out approach, as well as that it be a mechanism other than Firefox (or similar program).

I never, ever install Firefox (or Thunderbird, or any other non-base-system program) from Fedora Core (the same holds true for my Debian installations). I always go to the programs' home website and download them from there. Always. We have a long-standing tradition of installing 3rd-party/public-domain software in the /usr/local directory structure, whether on a desktop workstation or NFS-mounted from a server, and many/most of us have not and will not change this practice. Some of us sysadmins still prefer, for many reasons, to compile software ourselves, rather than install one which someone else compiled.

I'm with JoeBuck's excellent suggestion. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Thanks for stepping-up and being counted.

There are less offensive ways

Posted Oct 12, 2006 5:49 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

Last time I installed a mozilla.org/mozilla.com Firefox release (a few years back), it sent me to mozilla.org web page the first time I started it up. That sounds quite similar to what the Fedora guys are suggesting.

So installation tracking doesn't seem to be a reason to pick upstream over distribution releases in this particular case ...

There are less offensive ways

Posted Oct 12, 2006 15:08 UTC (Thu) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link]

There is a difference, the image is not visible to the user, that is an active attempt to deceive the user. Gathering information in that way is strange at best. They already have the information from their servers and they know what it costs to provide the service. Using a hidden image isn't going to change anything in a positive way and the counts are still not going to be accurate.

There are less offensive ways

Posted Oct 13, 2006 7:24 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

The huge message around it saying `this is a tracking image, this is what
it is for, this is why we are doing it' would tend to contradict your
little conspiracy theory.