[Github-comments] [geany/geany] Geany needs spyware 🙄 (Discussion #2918)

[elextr]

@xiota 

> I've edited the original post to make clear that this is a strawman proposal for discussion.

Absolutely no problem to ask the question, having a discussion and a recorded decision is always a good thing.

> Many programs "check for updates".

Checking anonymously for updates without providing any information is fine, but its hard to build in usefully when every distro has its own source of upgrades.  

There is an updatechecker plugin, but it tells the user that Geany project has released a new version.  But it may not appear in many distros for (literally) years, so it just as likely annoys users than is actually useful. 

Its sending information about the users machine/usage that makes it spyware.

> People who ask for a feature to be "changed" would likely be satisfied with an option for their request.

Its surprising how many object to making their brilliant idea optional or additional, I have never really understood why.

@eht16 agree with everything you said.

Just a final rant if I may, statistics and machine "learning" and similar are all backward looking, they tell you what happened yesterday, not how to move forward to tomorrow.  And they are fragile, any change in the environment invalidates any information content there might have been in their data.  

Statistics on usage of a feature do not tell you how that usage will change if you change the UI or the exact functionality.  In fact they can potentially lead to dysfunctional behaviour "we don't need to improve function X because nobody uses it", but maybe they don't use it because it needs improvement.  Or maybe its simply not useful to most, but the stats don't tell you that.

 And statistics don't provide any guidance as to what is appropriate in the application or it ends up as a grab bag of disparate parts, to quote the maintainer of Scintilla "its as important to know what not to add as it is what to add" and no stats will help with that. 

End grumpy olde guy rant.

-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/geany/geany/discussions/2918#discussioncomment-1448199
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.geany.org/pipermail/github-comments/attachments/20211008/dfe46678/attachment-0001.htm>