11 ms·

Honestly, this may be unpopular with hacker news, but just add your own telemetry. If people don't like it they can turn it off, and telemetry is essential for

Honestly, this may be unpopular with hacker news, but just add your own telemetry. If people don't like it they can turn it off, and telemetry is essential for a good product. Do let people turn it off though please.

groestl 4y ago
> If people don't like it they can turn it off If I, perchance, encounter software I use phoning home without my explicit permission it's done on my systems. Period.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  That is fine, but in this case telemetry trades you (and other more hardline users) as a user for all the extra users you gain from instant crash reports, quick feedback, and generally better productivity. I would never personally make that trade-off, and would always put (disableable) telemetry in my projects.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Well according to our telemetry 0% of users turn it off so it seems pretty popular. But more realistically what you gain in privacy you give up in having your voice heard by the devs. The decisions about the future of the product/project will be driven by the data, specifically the data from the kind of people who leave telemetry on.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    If 0% of your users disable it, that kind of screams there's something wrong with your opt-out mechanism. Is it broken? Hidden? Difficult to do? I mean, with any group of people, there will always be a percentage that will disable it. If the telemetry is popular, that percentage might be very small, but it would be non-zero.
    - jwilk 4y ago
      I think you missed the joke.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Oh! That's what the whooshing sound over my head was!
      - bioemerl 4y ago
        Oh shit, I missed it as well.
    - groestl 4y ago
      Well, those that turned it off are not phoning home, so the rest will be 100% ;)
  - groestl 4y ago
    See, I _am_ a dev. I run telemetry on my infrastructure, I analyse it and fix what's broken, and if necessary, try and get upstream fixed. Also, I'm not opposed to telemetry in general, but if a switch like this is turned on by default, trust is broken for good. Software which does any type of computing without it's user's informed consent is classifiable as malware, mind you.
Lammy 4y ago
> telemetry is essential for a good product Up until now, you've had to make these design decisions on your own, relying only on perplexing intangibilities like 'taste' and 'intuition'.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  I think it's somewhat silly to fly blind on the assumption that your taste is better than any real world observations you can make. Especially if you haven't had the chance to develop an intuition yet and are new to the field. Without data to correct you, how do you get better?
- waboremo 4y ago
  Those design decisions were never made in a vacuum. They relied on telemetry (or, less scarily, user testing, user feedback, user research, etc) to figure out what works best. As a reminder, our intuition doesn't come from nowhere, rather centuries of survival and expectations. If you do not know what these expectations are, and if you do not know how your users interact with your product based on these expectations, you cannot make a good product. Certainly, you can make a product that appeals only to you, but how many of yous exist? The design of a teapot is a great one. It didn't magically appear with handles and a spout and a place to hold leaves, but after years of refining based on usage. As shocking as that is, tea wasn't even discovered on purpose, let alone having a specific vessel for it right out the gate. So yes, telemetry is essential. Taste is personal.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
I think maybe even making telemetry mandatory with an open license, and customizable with a support license might be a sustainable way to run an open source company. For many open source project (anything with an attached business model), either telemetry or tight communication around usage patterns will be necessary to inform development. The latter of those two options consumes business resources.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  Mandatory with an open license might shoot yourself in the foot when people fork your code. For me, the harshest you can go is to have telemetry and not prompt for the setting on start with the user opted in by default. Ideally, you ask on first load, and that's what I'd probably aim for. You can't ever try to force people to do anything in open source. They'll run right by you and make it do what they want it to do with or without you. I'd even imagine paying customers are broadly more happy with telemetry than open source ones. And their needs more important anyways.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  > making telemetry mandatory with an open license If it's mandatory to run the code that does telemetrics, it's not a very open license.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    Just because Linux is open source doesn't mean you can't have both Fedora and Red Hat (an enterprise version built on the same codebase) I don't think any closed source goes into Red Hat, it's just the patch delivery pipelines, package repositories, etc that require a license. And support of course. Same with any distributed system whose core contributors could gain insight from telemetry. All the components are open source, but they can package it all up and make it available under different terms. If there's a community version and an enterprise version, you can then make telemetry required in the community version. If people don't like it, they can pull the package apart and put it back together however they want, or they can pay for an enterprise license.
msla 4y ago
> telemetry is essential for a good product No, it isn't, and the idea that is is toxic.
- bioemerl 4y ago
  Essential is probably not right, this is true. But I'm confident I'll make a better product with telemetry vs without.
msla 4y ago
If you do, and if people find out about it, they'll send you false data.

groestl 4y ago

> If people don't like it they can turn it off If I, perchance, encounter software I use phoning home without my explicit permission it's done on my systems. Period.

bioemerl 4y ago
That is fine, but in this case telemetry trades you (and other more hardline users) as a user for all the extra users you gain from instant crash reports, quick feedback, and generally better productivity. I would never personally make that trade-off, and would always put (disableable) telemetry in my projects.
Spivak 4y ago
Well according to our telemetry 0% of users turn it off so it seems pretty popular. But more realistically what you gain in privacy you give up in having your voice heard by the devs. The decisions about the future of the product/project will be driven by the data, specifically the data from the kind of people who leave telemetry on.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  If 0% of your users disable it, that kind of screams there's something wrong with your opt-out mechanism. Is it broken? Hidden? Difficult to do? I mean, with any group of people, there will always be a percentage that will disable it. If the telemetry is popular, that percentage might be very small, but it would be non-zero.
  - jwilk 4y ago
    I think you missed the joke.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Oh! That's what the whooshing sound over my head was!
    - bioemerl 4y ago
      Oh shit, I missed it as well.
  - groestl 4y ago
    Well, those that turned it off are not phoning home, so the rest will be 100% ;)
- groestl 4y ago
  See, I _am_ a dev. I run telemetry on my infrastructure, I analyse it and fix what's broken, and if necessary, try and get upstream fixed. Also, I'm not opposed to telemetry in general, but if a switch like this is turned on by default, trust is broken for good. Software which does any type of computing without it's user's informed consent is classifiable as malware, mind you.

Lammy 4y ago

> telemetry is essential for a good product Up until now, you've had to make these design decisions on your own, relying only on perplexing intangibilities like 'taste' and 'intuition'.

bioemerl 4y ago
I think it's somewhat silly to fly blind on the assumption that your taste is better than any real world observations you can make. Especially if you haven't had the chance to develop an intuition yet and are new to the field. Without data to correct you, how do you get better?
waboremo 4y ago
Those design decisions were never made in a vacuum. They relied on telemetry (or, less scarily, user testing, user feedback, user research, etc) to figure out what works best. As a reminder, our intuition doesn't come from nowhere, rather centuries of survival and expectations. If you do not know what these expectations are, and if you do not know how your users interact with your product based on these expectations, you cannot make a good product. Certainly, you can make a product that appeals only to you, but how many of yous exist? The design of a teapot is a great one. It didn't magically appear with handles and a spout and a place to hold leaves, but after years of refining based on usage. As shocking as that is, tea wasn't even discovered on purpose, let alone having a specific vessel for it right out the gate. So yes, telemetry is essential. Taste is personal.

pcthrowaway 4y ago

I think maybe even making telemetry mandatory with an open license, and customizable with a support license might be a sustainable way to run an open source company. For many open source project (anything with an attached business model), either telemetry or tight communication around usage patterns will be necessary to inform development. The latter of those two options consumes business resources.

bioemerl 4y ago
Mandatory with an open license might shoot yourself in the foot when people fork your code. For me, the harshest you can go is to have telemetry and not prompt for the setting on start with the user opted in by default. Ideally, you ask on first load, and that's what I'd probably aim for. You can't ever try to force people to do anything in open source. They'll run right by you and make it do what they want it to do with or without you. I'd even imagine paying customers are broadly more happy with telemetry than open source ones. And their needs more important anyways.
yencabulator 4y ago
> making telemetry mandatory with an open license If it's mandatory to run the code that does telemetrics, it's not a very open license.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Just because Linux is open source doesn't mean you can't have both Fedora and Red Hat (an enterprise version built on the same codebase) I don't think any closed source goes into Red Hat, it's just the patch delivery pipelines, package repositories, etc that require a license. And support of course. Same with any distributed system whose core contributors could gain insight from telemetry. All the components are open source, but they can package it all up and make it available under different terms. If there's a community version and an enterprise version, you can then make telemetry required in the community version. If people don't like it, they can pull the package apart and put it back together however they want, or they can pay for an enterprise license.

msla 4y ago

> telemetry is essential for a good product No, it isn't, and the idea that is is toxic.

bioemerl 4y ago
Essential is probably not right, this is true. But I'm confident I'll make a better product with telemetry vs without.

msla 4y ago

If you do, and if people find out about it, they'll send you false data.