Re: Phoning home

[David Nusinow <dnusinow@speakeasy.net>]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 08:27:59PM -0600, Raphael Geissert wrote:
> David Nusinow wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 07:44:53PM -0600, Raphael Geissert wrote:
> >> 
> >> The problem I see here is that admin != user in all the situations.
> >> IMO it should ask, or at least warn, the user and not the admin.
> >> Because in the end is the user's privacy the one affected, not the
> >> administrator's.
> > 
> > You want each package to notify each user? How do you recommend this
> > actually be carried out? Patching every program?
> 
> Using the program's settings facilities.
> All it has to do is check if the user has already been warned and if not do
> it, of course only when the program is run.
> 
> If there's no easy way to do it then just for the sake of simplicity a patch
> rewriting the 'phoning home' function should be written.
> 
> IMHO that sounds more reasonable than letting the admin decide about the
> users privacy.

I think just patching the program to default to not phoning home by
default, rather than something more elaborate and potentially bug-prone to
warn (read: annoy) them when they're going to phone home is a better
solution. Just give the user a sane default and let them change it if they
want.

 - David Nusinow