popularity-contest

[Tommy Trussell]

On 3/28/07, Jeffrey F. Bloss <jbloss at tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> I'd be a lot more upset if P-C phoned home by default. I see that sort
> of data mining as inherently evil even when it's voluntary, so finding
> out Ubuntu did this surreptitiously would be something that makes me
> choose another distro.
...
> > > It's in System > Administration > Software Sources, on the Statistics
> > > tab if you want to check. If you weren't previously aware of it it
> > > *should* still be disabled.
> > >
> >
> > In Feisty there is a tab for this, in Dapper there is not.
>
> Is there no "gooey" interface to it at all? That to me wouldn't make
> much sense. How many people are even aware of dpkg-reconfigure, let
> alone brave enough to run such a primitive command line tool? ;) Seems
> like they're discarding a pretty sizeable source of data...

Ubuntu "inherited" the package from Debian, which uses the data
primarily to order the packages on their CDs. (That way you get the
most popular packages on the first few Debian CDs and you don't have
to download them all to get a usable installation.)

I'm sure the developers COULD use the popularity information, but just
like in Debian, most people DON'T turn it on, so the package
popularity is being determined only by a small select few. Draw
additional political analogies, if you like. But I really doubt
there's much chance of any nefarious use either way.