helfire commited some work to tell the user about SNI's stat collection during installation, defaulted to yes. That way, users knew that SNI was collecting data, and the user is given the chance to learn about why that's a good idea, and ultimately given the choice to opt out.
Evan, I noticed that you reverted this work. I'm rather curious why. Telling the user that data is being collected is a good thing, and a common practice in the Free Software world. For example, Ubuntu has a prompt during installation telling that user that some stats will be collected to help Ubuntu understand how the software is used, and help the developers to better focus their resources. I think StatusNet should do the same thing - by not telling users that information is being collected about them, you end up really creeping them out. If I had installed StatusNet at work, and then later on, someone discovered data was being sent to SNI which my company did not know about, I would have been in trouble, as would others. It would have been a black eye not only for StatusNet, but future Free Software deployments. Users are not sufficiently notified now. For example, I've worked on and used StatusNet for a long time, and I didn't know about this reporting until a few days ago, and others I've talked to were equally unaware. The EFF, FSF, and some members of the SN community are very much against software phoning home without the user's explicit permission. I don't want to see StatusNet get a black eye over this when people find out about it. Is there some way we can revise helfire's work to be acceptable? Thanks, ~Craig _______________________________________________ StatusNet-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.status.net/mailman/listinfo/statusnet-dev
