6 ms·

This is an extraordinarily level-headed and well-reasoned version of the "how much telemetry" conversation, from both "sides". The Julia community comes off loo

This is an extraordinarily level-headed and well-reasoned version of the "how much telemetry" conversation, from both "sides". The Julia community comes off looking really good here.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Moreover, at present, we have no idea how many people use each solver (and on which platform!). Knowing how many people installed which solver would allow us to prioritize support from our finite developer time. Why not just let users vote on that? The support is for the users, no? Instead the developers want to minimise the amount of time they spend on maintenance based on the number of users who could potentially complain. The reason for this is (as we are about to be told) so they can spend more time working on platforms where they believe commercial solver developers could provide for-profit support services "(or $$)". This would also allow us to lobby the commercial solver developers to provide official support (or $$). To quote one company "We'll want to provide official support at some point, but it looks like the scales haven't tilted quite yet." It'd be nice to know whether 100, 1000, 10000, or 100000 people per month use their software; that might change their mind. The truth comes out. Collecting data via "frictionless" telemetry allows someone else, e.g., commercial solver developers, to make money. Nothing wrong with that if we let users know about these intentions, however when devlopers try to operate under the guise of "free", "non-profit", "open source", etc. while, truthfully, they have commercial motives, then it seems to me they are doing everything they can to avoid tipping users off that this aims to be a commercially-oriented project. Instead of just being transparent about their motives and letting users decide, they want to sneak something by (most) users. The issue raised here is not the collecting statistics (nothing wrong with that), it is the less transparent, opt-out nature of it: telemetry. Deceptiveness, stealth. The message coming from this discussion is "Don't tip (majority of) users off that we are collecting data." And why is that? Because the developers know this is something most users do not want. Finally, if it is opt-in, the vast majority of users will not opt-in. This leaves us no better off than we were before. Opt-out is a good compromise. The discussion should have ended right here. If providing usage statistics is something that the Julia developers already know the vast majority of users do not want to do, then sneaking it by them via opt-out telemetry is wrong, and it tells us much about the people behind Julia. If users do not want it, and you know that, then why the heck are you doing it anyway? Anyone reading this will know why, but most users will probably never read what we are reading here. The rest of this discussion devolves into "Everyone else is doing it". The lone dissenter finally gives in to peer pressure. I remember when using download statistics was enough. Developers still maintained software. No "trade-offs" were needed.
- spenczar5 6y ago
  > I remember when using download statistics was enough. Developers still maintained software. No "trade-offs" were needed. Do you remember applying for grants to fund software? It's tough out there, right now. Harder than it once was - software is more expensive, and funding agencies are more critical.
- mlubin 6y ago
  > I remember when using download statistics was enough. No download statistics are currently available for Julia packages. That's essentially the issue that the Pkg.jl telemetry is trying to address.
  - ViralBShah 6y ago
    Julia packages are github repos, where all we get are the traffic stats for the last 2 weeks for clones. It doesn't even provide the number of downloads of released software (the tarballs), or even basic stats that you could get from webserver access logs.
    - jcsuggestions 6y ago
      You could instead possibly: - move the project and ecosystem completely off GitHub - sell the project to a FAANG - go with the MathWorks model and just straight up sell closed source proprietary code (they have 5000+ employees and growing, you have ~30, maybe 40 if you count the JuliaLab that essentially work for JC as well) As much as people in the Julia community have dunked on Matlab in the past, at least MathWorks has their business model worked out, people understand the tradeoffs being made, and the dark pattern being used is just closed source software instead of exploiting PII.
      - dklend122 6y ago
        How are anonymous UUIDs PII and how is JC exploiting them? They have no special access nor do I see a first order effect that benefits them. Just that the open source Julia ecosystem will benefit and that will feed back into JC's market.

This is an extraordinarily level-headed and well-reasoned version of the "how much telemetry" conversation, from both "sides". The Julia community comes off looking really good here.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

Moreover, at present, we have no idea how many people use each solver (and on which platform!). Knowing how many people installed which solver would allow us to prioritize support from our finite developer time. Why not just let users vote on that? The support is for the users, no? Instead the developers want to minimise the amount of time they spend on maintenance based on the number of users who could potentially complain. The reason for this is (as we are about to be told) so they can spend more time working on platforms where they believe commercial solver developers could provide for-profit support services "(or $$)". This would also allow us to lobby the commercial solver developers to provide official support (or $$). To quote one company "We'll want to provide official support at some point, but it looks like the scales haven't tilted quite yet." It'd be nice to know whether 100, 1000, 10000, or 100000 people per month use their software; that might change their mind. The truth comes out. Collecting data via "frictionless" telemetry allows someone else, e.g., commercial solver developers, to make money. Nothing wrong with that if we let users know about these intentions, however when devlopers try to operate under the guise of "free", "non-profit", "open source", etc. while, truthfully, they have commercial motives, then it seems to me they are doing everything they can to avoid tipping users off that this aims to be a commercially-oriented project. Instead of just being transparent about their motives and letting users decide, they want to sneak something by (most) users. The issue raised here is not the collecting statistics (nothing wrong with that), it is the less transparent, opt-out nature of it: telemetry. Deceptiveness, stealth. The message coming from this discussion is "Don't tip (majority of) users off that we are collecting data." And why is that? Because the developers know this is something most users do not want. Finally, if it is opt-in, the vast majority of users will not opt-in. This leaves us no better off than we were before. Opt-out is a good compromise. The discussion should have ended right here. If providing usage statistics is something that the Julia developers already know the vast majority of users do not want to do, then sneaking it by them via opt-out telemetry is wrong, and it tells us much about the people behind Julia. If users do not want it, and you know that, then why the heck are you doing it anyway? Anyone reading this will know why, but most users will probably never read what we are reading here. The rest of this discussion devolves into "Everyone else is doing it". The lone dissenter finally gives in to peer pressure. I remember when using download statistics was enough. Developers still maintained software. No "trade-offs" were needed.

spenczar5 6y ago
> I remember when using download statistics was enough. Developers still maintained software. No "trade-offs" were needed. Do you remember applying for grants to fund software? It's tough out there, right now. Harder than it once was - software is more expensive, and funding agencies are more critical.
mlubin 6y ago
> I remember when using download statistics was enough. No download statistics are currently available for Julia packages. That's essentially the issue that the Pkg.jl telemetry is trying to address.
- ViralBShah 6y ago
  Julia packages are github repos, where all we get are the traffic stats for the last 2 weeks for clones. It doesn't even provide the number of downloads of released software (the tarballs), or even basic stats that you could get from webserver access logs.
  - jcsuggestions 6y ago
    You could instead possibly: - move the project and ecosystem completely off GitHub - sell the project to a FAANG - go with the MathWorks model and just straight up sell closed source proprietary code (they have 5000+ employees and growing, you have ~30, maybe 40 if you count the JuliaLab that essentially work for JC as well) As much as people in the Julia community have dunked on Matlab in the past, at least MathWorks has their business model worked out, people understand the tradeoffs being made, and the dark pattern being used is just closed source software instead of exploiting PII.
    - dklend122 6y ago
      How are anonymous UUIDs PII and how is JC exploiting them? They have no special access nor do I see a first order effect that benefits them. Just that the open source Julia ecosystem will benefit and that will feed back into JC's market.