Hi,
There is a difference between a library and an end-user application. Having "updaters" for end-user applications seems to be the status quo on Windows and to a lesser extent on Macs, but is resented on Linux. Having a library do these checks is not okay anywhere.
I remember a session at the Google Summer of Code where some guy from one of the open source wikis shared his experiences with having embedded a 'counter pixel' in a release. In short, his lesson learned was that any kind of "phoning home" is an absolute no-go unless made *very* clear to the users (plus opt-out). This was pre-Snowden, so many people are now much more sensible with respect to these matters...
Best regards, Karli
