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It'd be really cool if all open source was just designed with this in mind by the original coders. branding/telemetry/licensing should be explicit compile-time
by kgwxd 6y ago
It'd be really cool if all open source was just designed with this in mind by the original coders. branding/telemetry/licensing should be explicit compile-time parameters that, left unspecified, exclude it completely.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoI think Firefox works like this with regard to branding, right? People were also saying in a HN thread about WinGet the other day that privately-compiled builds would not have telemetry.
- ipsum2 6y agoNo, Firefox has telemetry built in, its not stripped on compile time.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoSorry, to be clear, for Firefox I was talking about branding.
- nojito 6y agoOpt out means devs get crappy data. Only way for software to improve is to get usage data. Would you rather be stuck with crappy software dictated by the needs and wants by the minority?
- thelittleone 6y agoApps in the 90s didn't have user data. I was approximately as productive on apps from the 90s as I am in modern apps today. I am more frequently frustrated by modern apps.
- vxNsr 6y agoI think this is something we need to study somehow even if it feels very true. I often find myself wondering why they’ve made something worse than it was a few years ago. Many parts of iOS and windows 10 have degraded from what they were.
- thelittleone 6y agoI agree totally. It could also be that user data is being used to make more profitable products not necessarily better products for the users.
- vxNsr 6y agoThis rings true. We have experts in funneling people to open their wallets but a dearth of ppl who are good at delighting, unless they see it as a way to make you open your wallet.
- baddox 6y agoWere you as productive then? I don’t know what kind of work you do, but I recently put together a website with a map displaying some public data around Covid-19. That website can be viewed in seconds by essentially anyone on a 3g or better internet connection by nearly any computer or smartphone released in the last 5 years. I can’t imagine I would be able to delivery even the basic mapping and data visualization features in the 1990s in the same time frame, and it certainly wouldn’t have the ease of distribution.
- pedrogpimenta 6y ago... what? So people weren't productive before computers? What does your story have to do with being productive or with productivity between now and the 90s or the tools you used?
- baddox 6y agoYes, people were vastly less productive at a huge number of tasks before computers. Tools and machines make people more productive. I’m very confused that this seems to be controversial. I suspect there is some unstated definition of “productivity” at play here that I am unfamiliar with.
- pedrogpimenta 6y agoIt's not controversial, you're talking about a tangential subject. Your example has nothing to do with being productive, just that there are much more tools available now. Your example couldn't even be possible in the 90s and you're not saying anything about text editors.
- nailer 6y agoReally? I remember apps in the nineties with simple bugs that didn't get fixed for /years/. That sometimes happens now, but nowhere near as much.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago> Only way for software to improve is to get usage data. That's a bold claim. Why not make something that works for the dev and then take user feedback into consideration?
- Jonnax 6y agoI think it's easy to argue that your loudest users aren't a representative sample.
- Silhouette 6y agoThat is true, but it is also easy to argue that the users who voluntarily consent to sending telemetry, or who don't block "mandatory" telemetry using methods beyond the developer's control, aren't a representative sample either. For example, in what should have been a surprise to no-one, it turned out that "power users" who spend a lot of time with a certain application and heavily customise its UI for their needs were also more likely to change default telemetry options to turn things off. Similarly, systems at work that are managed by specialist staff in large organisations tend to be more tightly locked down than what you find in a small office where Bob sets things up for the new starters when he has a couple of hours free from his usual job. Consequently, when certain big-name software developers redesigned their whole UI, proudly declaring that the new version would be more effective because it was based on what their objective telemetry data had told them about how the application was used, power users instead found the new UI confusing and inefficient. There is always some resistance to change in these situations, but when you have a significant and influential part of your market still not upgrading to your newer products years later and citing the UI as one of their reasons, you've probably made a mistake on that one.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoWheres the proof that yak shavers are power users?
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
- T3RMINATED 6y agojust look at sublime, it hasnt improved in a decade.
- millimeterman 6y agoThe fact that this is unpopular convinces me that most HN posters don't work on real commercial products. Or if they do, then I don't care to use the products they develop.
- api 6y agoI agree about telemetry. The other things not so much. You think authors should get no credit?
- snazz 6y agoI'm fine with this being left up to distribution maintainers. Arch Linux packages a fully open-source version of VS Code by default.
- paxys 6y agoThat is exactly how most open source projects (including VS Code itself and others like Chromium) already behave. You can easily clone and build the source code, which has no logos or telemetry or anything else. Microsoft itself then takes this code, bundles in their copyrighted stuff and distributes the final application from their website.
- piedar 6y agoThe vscode source does have telemetry enabled by default, which is why vscodium exists to patch it out.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoThe project explicitly says that is how VSCode is set up. The parameters are unspecified by default, and only specified by the Microsoft in their internal and official builds. The project is providing precompiled binaries using the default configuration.
- ThatGeoGuy 6y agoI do believe that is what the parent poster is saying? That they hope that _every_ project out there could do this as well, when such (anti-)features exist. I could see how you might misinterpret the comment if you skimmed over it or didn't have English as first language though.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoYeah, or addons that can be easily disabled. I mean the core application can be licensed with a permissive open source license, anything closed-source can be put in addons.