LWN: Comments on "Ubuntu Will No Longer Track Which Packages Users Install (OMG! Ubuntu!)"

Ubuntu Will No Longer Track Which Packages Users Install (OMG! Ubuntu!)

pabs — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 06:18:32 +0000

popularity-contest does not report package versions to the server, except that of popularity-contest itself and packages with version numbers in their name like gcc-10.

popcon.debian.org already handles unknown packages and that information is interesting to find out what packages Debian is missing. Most of it is of course popular proprietary stuff.

https://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_inst
https://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote

popularity-contest does report the distribution name in reports and popcon.debian.org publishes some stats about how many non-Debian submitters there are. The numbers are fairly small.

https://popcon.debian.org/

Ubuntu Will No Longer Track Which Packages Users Install (OMG! Ubuntu!)

tao — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 13:31:39 +0000

Sending Ubuntu's popcon data to popcon.debian.org would also report data that makes no sense in a Debian context; packages that doesn't exist in Debian, versions that don't exist in Debian, distros that don't exist in Debian, etc.

Ubuntu Will No Longer Track Which Packages Users Install (OMG! Ubuntu!)

ballombe — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 12:17:00 +0000

I like to clarify that Debian "popularity contest" (https://popcon.debian.org) works fine.
However the Ubuntu counterpart https://popcon.ubuntu.com has never been properly maintained, did not properly discard outdated submissions, and did not implement a number of features (e.g. encrypted submissions) that were supported by popcon.debian.org.
It has never been really usable even in 2006, this is not a new development of 18.04 or later.
So without plans to actually maintain it, it makes sense to remove it.

However the ubuntu popularity-contest must not be upgraded transparently to a version that report to popcon.debian.org.
First this would be a privacy breach for Ubuntu submiters, and secondly the popcon.debian.org is not ready to
receive and to process the resulting flood of submissions.
This happened in the past.

Ubuntu Will No Longer Track Which Packages Users Install (OMG! Ubuntu!)

pabs — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 05:01:35 +0000

Will the backend be removed too, since the package will now report Ubuntu users to Debian instead?

Ubuntu Will No Longer Track Which Packages Users Install (OMG! Ubuntu!)

xnox — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 09:56:00 +0000

It has always been opt in... Backend didn't work for years... but I guess "has not been tracking for years, and will now stop pretending one can opt into that" does not quite work as a sensational headline.