popularity-contest

[NoOp]

On 03/28/2007 09:31 PM, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> 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.
> 

Perhaps nothing nefarious, but 'call-home' programs should be *clearly
opt-in* as in the Edgy/Feisty tabs. And 'call-home' programs such as
this should only be loaded *after* the opt-in process (perhaps updates
is the exception).

http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ has broken links for the readme and faq links,
so there is nothing there that indicates how the data is used or
anything with regard to the privacy of the participant.  Debian on the
otherhand provides this:

http://popcon.debian.org/
and do have working faq & readme links:
http://popcon.debian.org/README
http://popcon.debian.org/FAQ

The http://popcon.debian.org/FAQ has some rather interesting information
regarding this 'program'.