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What if it's in an free open source project, and can be disabled? The point is to minimize the issues people open due to running old versions of the software.
by davidmurdoch 4y ago
What if it's in an free open source project, and can be disabled? The point is to minimize the issues people open due to running old versions of the software.
- worksonmine 4y agoI assume you're asking because you do collect it. It depends on your users and what level of privacy you claim. From some it's expected, others would result in uninstall. ToR phoning home on the users' open network will have a different reaction than Firefox, even if it's essentially the same browser.
- davidmurdoch 4y agoI don't, yet. Just asking because it'd be quite useful.
- account42 4y agoI personally don't want my software making any connections unprompted except if that is its primary purpose. Updates for OSS is also often installed via a package manager so additional checks are less useful and generally unwanted. That leaves non-package distribution (e.g. Windows or portable binaries) - I think best would be to either ask during installation or ask once if the local clock is quite a bit past the release date of the current version. Of course different people will have different opions on this.
- kijin 4y agoThis is Debian we're talking about. If you package something for inclusion in Debian, you're supposed to update it with APT, not some home-baked updater that phones its own mama and displays its own notification. If you want to push updates faster than Debian stable does, the proper way to do it is to provide a third-party APT repository. Then I can decide to disclose my IP to a mirror of my choice, using a proxy of my choice, that can be configured globally in /etc/apt.
- JohnFen 4y agoI think it's an even more urgent issue with FOSS. FOSS still has some trust (although it's evaporating), and handling this badly reduces that trust.