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I browse with Javascript disabled by default, so I didn't know they were doing this. Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? Is LibreOffice itself do

by mrob 8y ago

I browse with Javascript disabled by default, so I didn't know they were doing this. Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? Is LibreOffice itself doing something sneaky that I don't know about? I'd expect this kind of behavior from Facebook or Google, not a Free Software charitable foundation. Seeing that pop-up when I enabled Javascript made me think less of the Document Foundation. If they have a legitimate need for tracking, e.g. user logins for a forum, they can present the warning at the time the user interacts with it.

mksaunders 8y ago
> Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? It's not "tracking" (in the sense of monitoring what you do on other sites). On the LibreOffice website, we use the open source stats tool Matomo (formerly Piwik) to get an overview of how people use the site, how people go from one page to another, so that we can improve it. Lots of FOSS projects do this. Also, as explained in the privacy policy, JavaScript is required if you want to use certain third-party services that are embedded into some pages: https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-en/ https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-... > Is LibreOffice itself doing something sneaky that I don't know about? Of course not. We're a volunteer-driven, community open source project. It's all in the open :-) If you really want to change how the website works, we'd appreciate a hand: website+subscribe@global.libreoffice.org - thanks!
- WorkLifeBalance 8y ago
  1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. 2. Your privacy policy contains: > !!!add opt-out frame on the website at this position!!!
  - mksaunders 8y ago
    > 1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. OK, we're using open source tools to try to improve the site. Plenty of other FOSS projects do this... Not sure why we're being singled out :-)
    - mcbits 8y ago
      It sounds like it's more intrusive than most of the GDPR cookie notice spam that's been appearing on sites. But if it's causing users to start noticing and asking questions about the tracking on web sites, then GDPR seems to be working. (uBlock Origin also seems to be working because I didn't see the notice.)
    - anc84 8y ago
      You are not singled-out, this is a submission about you so it makes sense to talk about you. Everyone who tracks has improvements in mind.
    - dspillett 8y ago
      > Not sure why we're being singled out Someone who cares has noticed, and enough other people care that the thread is getting upvoted enough to hit the front page of HN. Though still you are not being "singled" out as there are plenty of sites which have had their cookie/privacy/tracking/other behaviours picked apart recently. You are not the first/only and will not be the last!
    - sjmulder 8y ago
      Not sure why we're being singled out :-) Didn't mean no harm or to single you guys out. You're doing fantastic work. But broken and noncompliant notices do bother me a bit. Sorry to drag on like this but the privacy statement (thanks for linking) says: takes place only with the consent of the user It does not, as there appears to be a second cookie notice underneath the first stating how consent is assumed: We use only those functional cookies which are absolutely necessary to ensure that we give you the best navigation experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with them. From my understanding, if you're using only functional cookies and no tracking you don't even need consent (as you have legal basis) and you can drop the notice altogether. But I don't think analytics count as functional cookies. Now aside from that nitpicking, thanks for writing such a clear privacy policy and making such good choices regarding the social media buttons, YouTube's privacy mode, and so on. Props!
      - mksaunders 8y ago
  - kqr 8y ago
    > What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. I'd argue you're being unfair with terminology here. People generally talk about tracking when referring to cookies and scripts that monitor what other sites users visit. Monitoring sessions on your own site is ethically distinct enough to warrant its own term: web analytics. You may think these are bad terms that don't reflect the true nature of the issue, and I'd be inclined to agree with you, but it is not an excuse to willingly conflate the two without qualifying it.
- mrob 8y ago
  Even if your tracking isn't directly harmful (I make no claims if it is or not), it's still indirectly harmful because it's training users to ignore warning pop-ups.
  - mksaunders 8y ago
    Look at it this way: * If we had a bad website, people would complain that it's ineffective, and not helping drive people towards FOSS * If we then add open source analytics tools to try to improve the site, people ask why we are "tracking" them * If we then add a banner, people complain that we're training people to ignore banners ...so it's hard to get anything right, it seems! We could remove Piwik completely (although it's not my call - I'm just one person in the project). But then it'd be much harder to improve our website. Piwik is really useful and if we want FOSS to be more widespread and adopted, we shouldn't shy away from such tools, IMO.
    - jhasse 8y ago
      You're are assuming that not using tracking will automatically result in a bad website. > We could remove Piwik completely Yes, please do that. > But then it'd be much harder to improve our website. Why?
      - mksaunders 8y ago
        > You're are assuming that not using tracking will automatically result in a bad website. But that's not what I said at all. Please don't just thrown in things like that. I said that analytics tools can be really useful in many ways to help to improve a website (especially a bad one). You ask "why", well look here at the features that the open source tool we use provides: https://matomo.org/features/ https://matomo.org/features/ I'm not sure if you've worked in website design before but many of those features are very important and effective for improving a website. If we want to spread the word about FOSS, and encourage more people to use it, shouldn't we try to make the best website we can? While also informing users about the open source tools we use, and having a clear privacy policy about them? https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-en/ https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-...
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Hmm, if you don't store personally identifiable information (such as the IP address), then I don't think you even need a tracking warning?
- djsumdog 8y ago
  > formerly Piwik I met two of the Piwik guys years ago. They got free office space at an open source company in NZ. Cool people. I remember at the time Piwik did support log scraping and Javascript tracking, but they recommended having how Piwik instances if you wanted both (one that scraped logs and the other that just did Javascript). I'm not sure there are any platforms that actually do both (which would also let you build stats on who has Javascript off or what may or may not be a robot). But the short story long: they can just do log parsing and not need the Javascript component.

by mrob 8y ago

mksaunders 8y ago

> Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? It's not "tracking" (in the sense of monitoring what you do on other sites). On the LibreOffice website, we use the open source stats tool Matomo (formerly Piwik) to get an overview of how people use the site, how people go from one page to another, so that we can improve it. Lots of FOSS projects do this. Also, as explained in the privacy policy, JavaScript is required if you want to use certain third-party services that are embedded into some pages: https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-en/ https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-... > Is LibreOffice itself doing something sneaky that I don't know about? Of course not. We're a volunteer-driven, community open source project. It's all in the open :-) If you really want to change how the website works, we'd appreciate a hand: website+subscribe@global.libreoffice.org - thanks!

WorkLifeBalance 8y ago
1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. 2. Your privacy policy contains: > !!!add opt-out frame on the website at this position!!!
- mksaunders 8y ago
  > 1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. OK, we're using open source tools to try to improve the site. Plenty of other FOSS projects do this... Not sure why we're being singled out :-)
  - mcbits 8y ago
    It sounds like it's more intrusive than most of the GDPR cookie notice spam that's been appearing on sites. But if it's causing users to start noticing and asking questions about the tracking on web sites, then GDPR seems to be working. (uBlock Origin also seems to be working because I didn't see the notice.)
  - anc84 8y ago
    You are not singled-out, this is a submission about you so it makes sense to talk about you. Everyone who tracks has improvements in mind.
  - dspillett 8y ago
    > Not sure why we're being singled out Someone who cares has noticed, and enough other people care that the thread is getting upvoted enough to hit the front page of HN. Though still you are not being "singled" out as there are plenty of sites which have had their cookie/privacy/tracking/other behaviours picked apart recently. You are not the first/only and will not be the last!
  - sjmulder 8y ago
    Not sure why we're being singled out :-) Didn't mean no harm or to single you guys out. You're doing fantastic work. But broken and noncompliant notices do bother me a bit. Sorry to drag on like this but the privacy statement (thanks for linking) says: takes place only with the consent of the user It does not, as there appears to be a second cookie notice underneath the first stating how consent is assumed: We use only those functional cookies which are absolutely necessary to ensure that we give you the best navigation experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with them. From my understanding, if you're using only functional cookies and no tracking you don't even need consent (as you have legal basis) and you can drop the notice altogether. But I don't think analytics count as functional cookies. Now aside from that nitpicking, thanks for writing such a clear privacy policy and making such good choices regarding the social media buttons, YouTube's privacy mode, and so on. Props!
    - mksaunders 8y ago
- kqr 8y ago
  > What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. I'd argue you're being unfair with terminology here. People generally talk about tracking when referring to cookies and scripts that monitor what other sites users visit. Monitoring sessions on your own site is ethically distinct enough to warrant its own term: web analytics. You may think these are bad terms that don't reflect the true nature of the issue, and I'd be inclined to agree with you, but it is not an excuse to willingly conflate the two without qualifying it.
mrob 8y ago
Even if your tracking isn't directly harmful (I make no claims if it is or not), it's still indirectly harmful because it's training users to ignore warning pop-ups.
- mksaunders 8y ago
  Look at it this way: * If we had a bad website, people would complain that it's ineffective, and not helping drive people towards FOSS * If we then add open source analytics tools to try to improve the site, people ask why we are "tracking" them * If we then add a banner, people complain that we're training people to ignore banners ...so it's hard to get anything right, it seems! We could remove Piwik completely (although it's not my call - I'm just one person in the project). But then it'd be much harder to improve our website. Piwik is really useful and if we want FOSS to be more widespread and adopted, we shouldn't shy away from such tools, IMO.
  - jhasse 8y ago
    You're are assuming that not using tracking will automatically result in a bad website. > We could remove Piwik completely Yes, please do that. > But then it'd be much harder to improve our website. Why?
    - mksaunders 8y ago
      > You're are assuming that not using tracking will automatically result in a bad website. But that's not what I said at all. Please don't just thrown in things like that. I said that analytics tools can be really useful in many ways to help to improve a website (especially a bad one). You ask "why", well look here at the features that the open source tool we use provides: https://matomo.org/features/ https://matomo.org/features/ I'm not sure if you've worked in website design before but many of those features are very important and effective for improving a website. If we want to spread the word about FOSS, and encourage more people to use it, shouldn't we try to make the best website we can? While also informing users about the open source tools we use, and having a clear privacy policy about them? https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-en/ https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy-...
Vinnl 8y ago
Hmm, if you don't store personally identifiable information (such as the IP address), then I don't think you even need a tracking warning?
djsumdog 8y ago
> formerly Piwik I met two of the Piwik guys years ago. They got free office space at an open source company in NZ. Cool people. I remember at the time Piwik did support log scraping and Javascript tracking, but they recommended having how Piwik instances if you wanted both (one that scraped logs and the other that just did Javascript). I'm not sure there are any platforms that actually do both (which would also let you build stats on who has Javascript off or what may or may not be a robot). But the short story long: they can just do log parsing and not need the Javascript component.