[Ardour-Users] ardour & "phoning home"

[Josh Parmenter]

you don't have to build Ardour from source on Linux... there are packages that (I bet) most users use. And - you can certainly build from source on OS X as well. I'm not sure it would really be skewed that heavily.
Josh

On Aug 9, 2010, at 8:45 AM, Ross Johnson wrote:

> Simon Wise wrote:
>> On 09/08/10 10:26, Ross Johnson wrote:
>>> Arnold Krille wrote:
>>>> On Saturday 07 August 2010 02:16:58 Ross Johnson wrote:
>>>>> Paul Davis wrote:
>>>>>> Why am I adding this to Ardour?
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>>>> I would advice to go a similar route to what ffado does: ask the user,
>>>> tell him why we want to know, tell him what we want to know, allow for
>>>> anonymous sending and not sending at all (as well as identified
>>>> sending). And redo that procedure on every new version so you get more
>>>> accurate numbers.
>>>> 
>>> This is ok with me provided it's not hidden away or obfuscated so the
>>> user has a clear choice. That why distributions are less likely to turn
>>> it off as well.
>> 
>> The challenge here is to avoid the situation where very few people opt in. There seems to be a couple of issues here ...
>> 
>> 1) It IS important to have this data.
>> 
> As a FLOSS user and FLOSS developer I am happy to provide information that enhances the success of the product. I would be significantly less happy if that same information led to the prioritisation of, say, MacOS development over Linux development.
> 
> Given that it is possible to download [from the Ardour site] a MacOS binary for Ardour, but Linux has to be built from source and therefore provides more opportunity to turn phone-home off, this is very likely to bias the usage stats heavily in favour of MacOS. So I would like to know a lot more about how the stats will be analysed to compensate for these distortions.
> 
> And in closing, I still haven't seen discussion of the possible future addition of "watermarking". What would be the intent of that in Ardour? And the fact that it was referred to in the same context as phone-home gave the whole matter an ominous overtone (no pun intended) and a taint of the most onerous proprietary products.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ardour-Users mailing list
> ardour-users at lists.ardour.org
> http://lists.ardour.org/listinfo.cgi/ardour-users-ardour.org

******************************************
/* Joshua D. Parmenter
http://www.realizedsound.net/josh/

“Every composer – at all times and in all cases – gives his own interpretation of how modern society is structured: whether actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously, he makes choices in this regard. He may be conservative or he may subject himself to continual renewal; or he may strive for a revolutionary, historical or social palingenesis." - Luigi Nono
*/