thoughts on LWN "how many Fedora users are there"

[Anne Wilson]

On Saturday 14 October 2006 08:26, Ric Moore wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-10-13 at 16:52 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:
> >
> > Surely this is easy enough to resolve?  If Fedora publish the script that
> > is used to harvest the IP and do whatever is required, surely it would be
> > simple enough for anyone who needs to, to check that their privacy is
> > preserved? After all, this is one of the main arguments in favour of Open
> > Source Software.
>
> Do a google on "adclick" to see just what users concerns might be, abuse
> happens. You're completely correct that an OpenSource model be used.

Are you suggesting that this collection of statistics is akin to the adclick 
trojan?  I don't think so.

In the end we all have to make some decisions about trust status.  Take mail 
messages, for instance.  I have kmail set to not display html messages.  I do 
have a folder, though, where I filter certain messages and which is set to 
allow html mail.  This is because I trust the originators and I have listed 
them specifically in procmail.  If I choose to run Fedora I have to be able 
to say that I trust the developers/maintainers.

The irony of this is that they could have collected this information without 
us knowing anything about it (and for that matter they could do a lot worse 
than that).  It's only because they have been honest and open about it that 
the argument/discussion exists at all.

Anne
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