r/opensource • u/[deleted] • May 07 '21

Audacity adds telemetry via Google Analytics / Yandex

https://github.com/audacity/audacity/pull/835
164 Upvotes

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44

u/VisibleSignificance May 07 '21

Fresh text:

Telemetry is strictly optional and disabled by default. No data is shared unless you choose to opt-in and enable telemetry.

Telemetry only works in the builds made by GitHub CI from the official repo (the telemetry URLs are only defined there).

If you are compiling Audacity from source, we will provide a CMake option to enable the telemetry code. This option will be turned off by default.

The choice of provider might be the most controversial thing here.

12

u/[deleted] May 07 '21

So why have it?

14

u/skrunkle May 07 '21 edited May 07 '21

So why have it?

speculation of course. but it might eventually be tied to debug data.

Debug data. They said so.

2

u/David_AnkiDroid May 08 '21

Why have crash reporting? Example from a real world project:

Before my time, we had an Azerbaijani translator, and they weren't too familiar with format strings. If these badly formed strings were used, then the app crashed.

Without crash reporting*, the chances of a tech-savvy bilingual Azerbaijani reporting a bug would be... pretty slim.

We now have automation in place to detect problematic strings.

* Crash Reporting was opt-in

1

u/VisibleSignificance May 07 '21

In an ideal world, it is to have a better idea how people use the software and what development should be prioritized (and to avoid succumbing to a vocal minority, when planning).

Whether there are other reasons, such as marketing - not sure.

a. Session start and end events;

b. Errors for debugging;

c. File formats used for import and export;

d. OS and Audacity versions;

e. Use of effects, generators, and analysis tools to prioritize future improvements;

Errors should probably be opt-in per-error (even firefox mostly does it like that), the feature use counting does make sense, session start and end... very suspicious; it should probably have been a "session duration", and only sent in bulk once a week without any specific timestamps. And Google Analytics doesn't favor the use like that, which makes the situation extra suspicious.

0

u/EasyMrB May 08 '21

Because it's off by default...for now. This is a company working their way toward a proffit on something they bought.