Bug#964905: RFP: goatcounter -- easy, meaningful privacy-friendly web analytics
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
* Package name : goatcounter
Version : 1.3.1
Upstream Author : Martin Tournoij <martin@arp242.net>
* URL : https://www.goatcounter.com/
* License : EUPL 1.2
Programming Lang: Golang
Description : easy, meaningful privacy-friendly web analytics
GoatCounter is an open source web analytics platform available as a
hosted service (free for non-commercial use) or self-hosted app. It
aims to offer easy to use and meaningful privacy-friendly web
analytics as an alternative to Google Analytics or Matomo.
There are two ways to run this: as hosted service on goatcounter.com,
free for non-commercial use, or run it on your own server (the source
code is completely Open Source/Free Software, and it can be
self-hosted without restrictions).
Features:
* Privacy-aware; doesn't track users with unique identifiers and
doesn't need a GDPR consent notice. Also see the privacy policy.
* Lightweight and fast; adds just ~5K (~2.5K compressed) of extra
data to your site. Also has JavaScript-free "tracking pixel"
option, or you can use it from your application's middleware.
* Easy; if you've been confused by the myriad of options and
flexibility of Google Analytics and Matomo that you don't need then
GoatCounter will be a breath of fresh air.
* Identify unique visits without cookies using a non-identifiable
hash (technical details).
* Keeps useful statistics such as browser information, location, and
screen size. Keep track of referring sites and campaigns.
* Accessibility is a high-priority feature, and the interface works
well with screen readers, no JavaScript, and even text browsers
(although not all features work equally well without JS).
* 100% committed to open source; you can see exactly what the code
does and make improvements.
* Own your data; you can always export all data and cancel at any
time.
* Integrate on your site with just a single script tag
* The JavaScript integration is a good option for most, but you can
also use a no-JavaScript image-based tracker or integrate in your
backend middleware.
* Fast: can handle about 800 hits/second on a $5/month Linode VPS
using the default settings.
* Self-contained binary: everything – including static assets – is in
a single ~7M statically compiled binary. The only other thing you
need is a SQLite database file or PostgreSQL connection (no way
around that).
----
There are many other analytics programs in Debian: goaccess, analog,
webalizer, and probably others. But goatcounter is unique in that it's
one of the few analytics programs that actually makes a genuine
attempt at somewhat anonymizing the data it collects.
I found this program through this LWN article:
https://lwn.net/Articles/822568/
It would be great if some other go team folks would take this on, but
otherwise I might just do it myself in my copious spare time.
It seems the packaging might take some work with dependencies, as
dh-make-golang took its sweet time to just fail with an error:
$ dh-make-golang estimate github.com/zgoat/goatcounter
go get: 25.17 MiBpackage github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/handlers: code in directory /tmp/dh-make-golang269924867/src/github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/handlers expects import "zgo.at/goatcounter/handlers"
go get: 221.47 MiBpackage github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/cmd/check
imports honnef.co/go/tools/code: cannot find package "honnef.co/go/tools/code" in any of:
/usr/lib/go-1.11/src/honnef.co/go/tools/code (from $GOROOT)
/tmp/dh-make-golang269924867/src/honnef.co/go/tools/code (from $GOPATH)
package github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/cmd/check
imports honnef.co/go/tools/facts: cannot find package "honnef.co/go/tools/facts" in any of:
/usr/lib/go-1.11/src/honnef.co/go/tools/facts (from $GOROOT)
/tmp/dh-make-golang269924867/src/honnef.co/go/tools/facts (from $GOPATH)go get: 261.54 MiBpackage github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/cmd/goatcounter
imports arp242.net/sconfig/handlers/html/template: unrecognized import path "arp242.net/sconfig/handlers/html/template" (parse https://arp242.net/sconfig/handlers/html/template?go-get=1: no go-import meta tags ())
2020/07/11 17:26:52 exit status 1
make fails in a similar way:
anarcat@emma:dist(master)$ dh-make-golang make github.com/zgoat/goatcounter
2020/07/11 17:27:29 Downloading "github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/..."
2020/07/11 17:27:40 Determining upstream version number
2020/07/11 17:27:40 Package version is "1.3.0+git20200711.37ad12d"
can't load package: package github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/handlers: code in directory /tmp/dh-make-golang955010176/src/github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/handlers expects import "zgo.at/goatcounter/handlers"
2020/07/11 17:27:41 Could not create a tarball of the upstream source: [go list -f {{.ImportPath}} {{.Name}} github.com/zgoat/goatcounter/...]: exit status 1
... and indeed, many packages in go.mod point at zgo.at, which is a
repository hosted just for goatcounter...
So, much fun in perspective.
a.
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