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The reason they collect telemetry usually is why they say they do - to improve the product. If it's commercial software then, sure, the ulterior motive is to ge

The reason they collect telemetry usually is why they say they do - to improve the product. If it's commercial software then, sure, the ulterior motive is to get more money out of you, but they're doing that by making you like the product more so, great? And if you're worried that your user case (e.g. not-systemd) will be deprecated then that's a good reason to keep it on and be represented. I bet people who used Firefox's RSS feature were more likely than usual to turn off telemetry, yet that didn't save their feature. If anything, it may have made Mozilla more confident in removing it

justinclift 3y ago
> ... to improve the product. That phrase can be viewed in many different ways, depending upon who the decision makers setting the goals are. > If anything, it may have made Mozilla more confident in removing it ... Of course. People know this, that's a good part of why people are against metrics. It leads to dumbed down software, as there's always a 5% of features that can be cut (on every budget or dev iteration) to "focus more on the majority uses!".
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Exactly. It all depends on what you mean by "improve".
AlexandrB 3y ago
> The reason they collect telemetry usually is why they say they do - to improve the product. Even if that's true, organizations like to keep this stuff for longer than they should and are not immune to hacks or changing business priorities (like AI). If there was serious liability attached to leaking or "off-label" use of this data then I'd feel better about it. Also, using telemetry to justify removing features is not about making the product better but about cutting costs. How is Firefox better without RSS support? The fact that only a small number of users use it tells you nothing about how passionate or influential those users are, nor how such a change will affect wider perception of your products. See also: how pissed off many on HN still are about the death of Google Reader even though it was a "niche" product.
- freedomben 3y ago
  > Also, using telemetry to justify removing features is not about making the product better but about cutting costs. How is Firefox better without RSS support? Maintaining stuff has a cost in time and/or money. Added new features or fixing bugs has a cost in time and/or money. Time and/or money is limited, so decisions must be made on what is the best use of it. Removing features can (sometimes) result in a lot of savings in the form of simplified codebase (which means improved developer productivity), reduces surface area for bugs, etc. I (really) hate when products remove features, and I think it's often done assuming a lot more savings than actually happens, but there is some logic to it. I don't know what Firefox used the RSS support savintgs to do, but if they used it to build containers (which I use constantly) then for me Firefox is much better. If they squandered that time, then of course it's not better off. But without having access to roadmaps and planning documents, it's dificult to know which tradeoffs were made.
denton-scratch 3y ago
If you deploy telemetry and go on to assume that it's giving you accurate information, that's a mistake. Blaming it on me for not letting them have their telemetry is victim-blaming.

justinclift 3y ago

> ... to improve the product. That phrase can be viewed in many different ways, depending upon who the decision makers setting the goals are. > If anything, it may have made Mozilla more confident in removing it ... Of course. People know this, that's a good part of why people are against metrics. It leads to dumbed down software, as there's always a 5% of features that can be cut (on every budget or dev iteration) to "focus more on the majority uses!".

denton-scratch 3y ago
Exactly. It all depends on what you mean by "improve".

AlexandrB 3y ago

> The reason they collect telemetry usually is why they say they do - to improve the product. Even if that's true, organizations like to keep this stuff for longer than they should and are not immune to hacks or changing business priorities (like AI). If there was serious liability attached to leaking or "off-label" use of this data then I'd feel better about it. Also, using telemetry to justify removing features is not about making the product better but about cutting costs. How is Firefox better without RSS support? The fact that only a small number of users use it tells you nothing about how passionate or influential those users are, nor how such a change will affect wider perception of your products. See also: how pissed off many on HN still are about the death of Google Reader even though it was a "niche" product.

freedomben 3y ago
> Also, using telemetry to justify removing features is not about making the product better but about cutting costs. How is Firefox better without RSS support? Maintaining stuff has a cost in time and/or money. Added new features or fixing bugs has a cost in time and/or money. Time and/or money is limited, so decisions must be made on what is the best use of it. Removing features can (sometimes) result in a lot of savings in the form of simplified codebase (which means improved developer productivity), reduces surface area for bugs, etc. I (really) hate when products remove features, and I think it's often done assuming a lot more savings than actually happens, but there is some logic to it. I don't know what Firefox used the RSS support savintgs to do, but if they used it to build containers (which I use constantly) then for me Firefox is much better. If they squandered that time, then of course it's not better off. But without having access to roadmaps and planning documents, it's dificult to know which tradeoffs were made.

denton-scratch 3y ago

If you deploy telemetry and go on to assume that it's giving you accurate information, that's a mistake. Blaming it on me for not letting them have their telemetry is victim-blaming.