On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 5:05 AM, Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 7:45 AM, Thomas Kahle <to...@gentoo.org> wrote: >> Sorry, but NO. If you want you can make a big noise message that asks >> users to install the cron-job but opt-out is not an option here. > > Well, that's up to the Council/Trustees ultimately, but opinions (and > better still reasoning) are welcome since both would no-doubt want to > reflect the will of the community (and whatever is legal in the > jurisdictions that matter).
It doesn't take a council vote nor a trustees vote to add a package to everyone's machine. In the end I'd recommend just looking at the opt-in numbers. Is the data useful from opt-in users? If the answer is no, then we can always think up other ways to get more users. Will auto-installs be on the list of ideas? You bet ;) But I think we are putting the cart before the horse. > > One option that many distros employ is a forced opt-in/out decision. > During the install process they simply ask the user, and they have to > hit either yes or no to continue. The reason most people don't opt-in > is that they don't think about it, and this forces the issue. > > The Gentoo analogue would be to put something in make.conf or whatever > that must be set one way or another. Maybe have an opt-in use flag > and an opt-out use flag and if you don't set either emerge just dies > with a notice or something. No doubt somebody could come up with a > more elegant solution. The stage3 tarball doesn't even come with a dhcp client; so I don't really see how installing a stats client makes sense from the standpoint of 'only what is necessary.' For many people, that is an important part of Gentoo (cf. python3...) Making emerge die unless you make a decision will probably break a bunch of shit (plenty of people have automatic installs in some fashion.) We would have to use an existing methodology to avoid breaking them (PROPERTIES=interactive?) > > Maybe another line of discussion that could inform the debate is what > the value of this information is? For a company, knowing what > packages are popular helps them to allocate resources. Gentoo is a > volunteer effort and devs allocate their effort based on personal > preference, though perhaps some would care about package popularity to > an extent. So, we might not benefit to the same degree from this kind > of information, since we can't crack the whip and force people to fix > some broken package that is popular. I think at present we don't know the informations value; that is part of why considering opt-out is premature ;) > > Rich > >
