Sorry for hijacking the thread, but
On 12/ 9/16 10:50 AM, Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-devs wrote:
I have wanted telemetry for years. ("Telemetry" is the term Microsoft, and I think others, use for the phone-home feature.)
telemetry or better "call-home", this is very dangerous idea to even mention in the context of the compiler. In some circles even mentioning this may result in losing the trust put in the compiler.
It would tell us how many people are using GHC; currently I have literally no idea.
For this you don't need any kind of telemetry, but you can use numbers from various distributions popularity contests. E.g. debian:
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=ghc https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=alex https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=happy https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=haskell-platform
It could tell us which language features are most used.
Language features are hard if they are not available in separate libs. If in libs, then IIRC debian is packaging those in separate packages, again you can use their package contest.
Perhaps it could tell us about performance, but I'm not sure how we could make use of that info without access to the actual source.
So then, how may GHC users trust GHC not sending their own precious sources "home" just for GHC performance improvements -- which btw, may not be in the interest of the users as they may be happy with current state?
The big issue is (a) design and implementation effort, and (b) dealing with the privacy issues. I think (b) used to be a big deal, but nowadays people mostly assume that their software is doing telemetry, so it feels more plausible. But someone would need to work out whether it had to be opt-in or opt-out, and how to actually make it work in practice.
Privacy here is complete can of worms (keep in mind you are dealing with a lot of different law systems), I strongly suggest not to even think about it for a second. Your note "but nowadays people mostly assume that their software is doing telemetry" may perhaps be true in sick mobile apps world, but I guess is not true in the world of developing secure and security related applications for either server usage or embedded.
So if I may ask, please no, do not do any telemetry/calling home in GHC nor in its runtime system and even do not think about it. This is IMHO extremely dangerous.
Thanks! Karel _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs