There is the answer of upstream author of ovito. Please, CC him explicitly in case of respond.
Thanks Anton ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Alexander Stukowski <m...@ovito.org> Date: 2014-04-26 21:52 GMT+02:00 Subject: Re: Bug#745668: Really fixed? To: Anton Gladky <gl...@debian.org> Cc: D Haley <my...@gmx.com> Hi Anton, I’ve sent the following message to 745...@bugs.debian.org, but I’m not sure if it was received correctly (It didn't appear in the bug tracking system so far). So here’s a copy: As the original author of OVITO, let me give a detailed technical description of the update notification system in the current version of OVITO and how the number of installations is tracked: OVITO displays an informational text in the main window’s right panel after startup. The text disappears once the user performs an action such a loading a dataset. The displayed text is a html page, which is automatically updated from the web server www.ovito.org after each program start. When a new program release becomes available, the html page delivered by the web server will contain a note that invites the user to go to www.ovito.org and download the update with their web browser. To refresh the html page, OVITO makes an http request of the form: http://www.ovito.org/appnews/v2.3.3/?ovito=00589bb22b8dda22b6f9ef7bc6ed57ea&OS=macosx64 That means the current program version, the unique installation ID (a 16-byte random number generated on first program start and subsequently stored in the settings store), and the OS type are encoded in this URL. All HTTP requests get logged by the web server, and I have a bash script that greps the IDs within a certain time window and counts unique IDs to estimate the number of active installations of the program. I need this estimate of the number of users to justify the development of the software to my employer and public funding agencies. No full IP addresses are logged by the web server. There are now two user options that control this feature: The setting "updates/transmit_id” controls the transmission of the unique installation ID. If set to “false", the requested URL will contain only zeros instead of the ID. The second setting, "updates/check_for_updates”, controls the fetching of the html page from the web server. If set to false, the hardcoded default text supplied with the program will be displayed instead of the online version (and no http request is made). The default values for both settings is “true". The html page displayed at program startup (both the hardcoded one and the one delivered by the server) contain the following notice: "Privacy notice: OVITO contacts the web server www.ovito.org on every program start to update this page and inform you about available program updates. It may also transmit an installation ID to help the author collect anonymous usage statistics. You can change this behavior in the application settings.” The application settings dialog provides further information (in the form of tooltips) on the installation ID and why it exists. The program uses the QSettings class [1] from the Qt library to store its user settings. The default settings are hardcoded in the C++ code. For instance, this expression in ModifyCommandPage.cpp states that the default value for the “updates/check_for_updates” settings is “true": settings.value("updates/check_for_updates", true).toBool() The source file GeneralSettingsPage.cpp contains a similar statement. That means the default values for the two settings I discussed above appear in two locations of the code. I might change/improve this situation in the future. Please understand that for me, the developer, it is desirable to have this update notification system in place. One reason is of course that I don’t want users to use outdated versions of the program (and contacting me with unnecessary support questions/bug reports without being aware of available updates). I experienced this for quite a while, because the Debian/Ubuntu package hasn’t been updated for many years and people were still using an ancient program version (which didn’t have the update notification yet). The second reason is, as I said above, that I need some statistics on the total number of users. This can be decisive for the future of the program and may determine whether further work on the code will be funded. Let me know if there are still open questions regarding this. -Alexander [1] http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5/QSettings.html#details On 26.04.2014, at 17:41, Anton Gladky <gl...@debian.org> wrote: Dear Alexander, could you, please, explain in a bug tracker for a wider audience, how the new logic of this feature will work? Thank you Anton 2014-04-26 16:23 GMT+02:00 D Haley <my...@gmx.com>: + layout2->addWidget(_enableUsageStatistics, 1, 0); It looks like it is still enabled by default? I might be wrong, as I am unfamiliar with QT's config file system. But its not clear what the default value is set to. As updates are handled by apt-get/aptitude, this should be disabled by default. There is no need to contact a remote server. -- debian-science-maintainers mailing list debian-science-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-science-maintainers