On the contrary, OSS is precisely where this kind of spying on your users is least useful, since there's already a culture of them telling you, sometimes with code, what they need.

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simonw 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's not been my experience at all. The default response to open source code is stone cold silence - getting any feedback at all takes real effort.

Those PyPI download numbers are one of the most useful hints as to whether my stuff is being used by anyone.

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Ygg2 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If that's the issue, that's a problem. They are telling you X. People, if they tell you, don't give their honest feedback. Or they might be a loud minority.

If you ask people what coffee they want, they will all tell you low-sugar, very bitter black coffee. Then you see what they buy, and they keep buying sugary and creamy coffee that contains almost no caffeine.

Telemetry isn't spying. At least when done properly. How do you figure out rare OOM crashes without some telemetry data? What if the reporter doesn't know how to figure out their OS and installed software that's required for debugging?

I'm NOT saying telemetry should capture everything and sell that data to info brokers. I'm saying, done properly it give you valuable feedback. And you should be transparent about it.

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yjftsjthsd-h 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> Telemetry isn't spying. At least when done properly. How do you figure out rare OOM crashes without some telemetry data? What if the reporter doesn't know how to figure out their OS and installed software that's required for debugging?

Recording information about someone's computer and then sending it to the developer without their knowledge or consent is spying. If you want to include a feature in the software to report a bug or collect crash info or whatever that tells the user what it's going to send and gets their affirmative consent, then yeah that's totally fine and not spying, but that's not what we appear to be talking about here. To use your analogy,

> If you ask people what coffee they want, they will all tell you low-sugar, very bitter black coffee. Then you see what they buy, and they keep buying sugary and creamy coffee that contains almost no caffeine.

That might be true, but it doesn't justify sticking a camera in their pantry to find out.

	▲	Ygg2 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Recording information about someone's computer and then sending it to the developer without their knowledge or consent is spying. That's why I said done properly. You need full transparency. What is recorded and why, and how is the information dealt with. In practice most people don't care. If they did they would disable all achievements, because even achievements are a form of telemetry. You can see what percent of people finished the game for example. What percent played mini game, etc. Anything that reveals remote metrics, is telemetry.