Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

Hi all,

Gentoostats[0] is a GSoC 2011 project to collect package statistics from gentoo
machines. Please check it out. Bug reports and feature suggestions are welcome.

To submit your stats, use the app-portage/gentoostats ebuild from betagarden
overlay[1].

[0] https://soc.dev.gentoo.org/gentoostats/
[1] https://soc.dev.gentoo.org/gentoostats/about

--
Vikraman

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

Hi all,

Gentoostats[0] is a GSoC 2011 project to collect package statistics from gentoo
machines. Please check it out. Bug reports and feature suggestions are welcome.

To submit your stats, use the app-portage/gentoostats ebuild from betagarden
overlay[1].

[0] https://soc.dev.gentoo.org/gentoostats/
[1] https://soc.dev.gentoo.org/gentoostats/about

--
Vikraman

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

Hi Vikram,

there is one important aspect of your program that really needs to be documented (and comments in the code are not enough):

What data exactly is the client sending to the server?!

What you need is basically an easy-to-find file / web page / ... where this is explained concise and in simple words. As long as that does not exist, your program will not find much acceptance.

Apart from that, I like the entire project, and am curious about its results.

Best,
Andreas


Am Montag 22 August 2011, 23:20:30 schrieb Vikraman:
> Hi all,
>
> Gentoostats[0] is a GSoC 2011 project to collect package statistics from gentoo
> machines. Please check it out. Bug reports and feature suggestions are welcome.
>
> To submit your stats, use the app-portage/gentoostats ebuild from betagarden
> overlay[1].
>
> [0] https://soc.dev.gentoo.org/gentoostats/
> [1] https://soc.dev.gentoo.org/gentoostats/about
>
>


--
Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer - kde, sci, arm, tex
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

Hi,

On 18:16 Tue 23 Aug 2011, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> there is one important aspect of your program that really needs to be
> documented (and comments in the code are not enough):
>
> What data exactly is the client sending to the server?!
>
> What you need is basically an easy-to-find file / web page / ... where
> this is explained concise and in simple words. As long as that does
> not exist, your program will not find much acceptance.


You may look at the files README and FAQ for Ubuntu's popularity
contest: http://popcon.ubuntu.com/

If we could get their turnout rates, that'd be great.

> Apart from that, I like the entire project, and am curious about its
> results.

+1

It has come up several times that getting usage statistics would
motivate developers.

Cheers,
Thomas



--
Thomas Kahle
http://dev.gentoo.org/~tomka/

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

On 08/24/11 12:31, Thomas Kahle wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 18:16 Tue 23 Aug 2011, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
>> there is one important aspect of your program that really needs to be
>> documented (and comments in the code are not enough):
>>
>> What data exactly is the client sending to the server?!
>>
>> What you need is basically an easy-to-find file / web page / ... where
>> this is explained concise and in simple words. As long as that does
>> not exist, your program will not find much acceptance.
>
>
> You may look at the files README and FAQ for Ubuntu's popularity
> contest: http://popcon.ubuntu.com/
>
> If we could get their turnout rates, that'd be great.

If you sneakily add something to cron.daily by default you can get
pretty nice coverage. But I guess anyone trying that in Gentooland will
meet some rather unpleasant resistance :)

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

Am Mittwoch 24 August 2011, 12:48:35 schrieb Patrick Lauer:
>
> If you sneakily add something to cron.daily by default you can get
> pretty nice coverage. But I guess anyone trying that in Gentooland will
> meet some rather unpleasant resistance :)
>

Of course, we could place it in some blatantly obvious way into a default configuration, together with a big fat message what it does and how to quickly disable it.

We'd get better coverage in an opt-out system than in an opt-in system.

(First idea- package is pulled in by a default-on useflag and installs itself into cron.daily. BEFORE it runs the first time it outputs said message and asks for permission to proceed (which cannot be done in the cron job obviously but we'd find a way).)

--
Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer - kde, sci, arm, tex
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 6:48 AM, Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> wrote:
> If you sneakily add something to cron.daily by default you can get
> pretty nice coverage. But I guess anyone trying that in Gentooland will
> meet some rather unpleasant resistance :)

Well, we could always broadcast the news widely (lists, forums,
eselect news, and so on).

I'd also make it controllable via use flag. Put the client and the
cron.daily file in a package, and then make that a use-dependency of
something everybody has (the profile if profiles support this (don't
think they do), and if not pick something that correlates well with
people who would benefit from this feature.

Users can opt-out via use flag.

You can also start out with it being opt-in (use flag off by default
in profiles), and then turn it on later (with notice/etc).

The key is to not be sneaky about it.

Rich

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

On 12:48 Wed 24 Aug 2011, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On 08/24/11 12:31, Thomas Kahle wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 18:16 Tue 23 Aug 2011, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> >> there is one important aspect of your program that really needs to be
> >> documented (and comments in the code are not enough):
> >>
> >> What data exactly is the client sending to the server?!
> >>
> >> What you need is basically an easy-to-find file / web page / ... where
> >> this is explained concise and in simple words. As long as that does
> >> not exist, your program will not find much acceptance.
> >
> >
> > You may look at the files README and FAQ for Ubuntu's popularity
> > contest: http://popcon.ubuntu.com/
> >
> > If we could get their turnout rates, that'd be great.
>
> If you sneakily add something to cron.daily by default you can get
> pretty nice coverage. But I guess anyone trying that in Gentooland will
> meet some rather unpleasant resistance :)

Oh yeah... when I used Ubuntu last 11/06 it would still ask you on
install.

@Vikraman: I guess you see how *important* it is to be completely open
and explain everything the program does. On Gentoo it should of course
be opt-in, instead of opt-out.


--
Thomas Kahle
http://dev.gentoo.org/~tomka/

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

On 13:03 Wed 24 Aug 2011, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> Am Mittwoch 24 August 2011, 12:48:35 schrieb Patrick Lauer:
> >
> > If you sneakily add something to cron.daily by default you can get
> > pretty nice coverage. But I guess anyone trying that in Gentooland will
> > meet some rather unpleasant resistance :)
> >
>
> Of course, we could place it in some blatantly obvious way into a default configuration, together with a big fat message what it does and how to quickly disable it.
>
> We'd get better coverage in an opt-out system than in an opt-in system.
>
> (First idea- package is pulled in by a default-on useflag and installs itself into cron.daily. BEFORE it runs the first time it outputs said message and asks for permission to proceed (which cannot be done in the cron job obviously but we'd find a way).)

Sorry, but NO. If you want you can make a big noise message that asks
users to install the cron-job but opt-out is not an option here.



--
Thomas Kahle
http://dev.gentoo.org/~tomka/

Gentoostats, SoC 2011
 

i am a user and i am ok with opt-out if the std data that is transferd
is compleatly anonymized
so no sensitive data.

and if the user wants to register his/her machine pkg's more data is trasnfered

thx
Mario

2011/8/24 Thomas Kahle <tomka@gentoo.org>:
> On 13:03 Wed 24 Aug 2011, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
>> Am Mittwoch 24 August 2011, 12:48:35 schrieb Patrick Lauer:
>> >
>> > If you sneakily add something to cron.daily by default you can get
>> > pretty nice coverage. But I guess anyone trying that in Gentooland will
>> > meet some rather unpleasant resistance :)
>> >
>>
>> Of course, we could place it in some blatantly obvious way into a default configuration, together with a big fat message what it does and how to quickly disable it.
>>
>> We'd get better coverage in an opt-out system than in an opt-in system.
>>
>> (First idea- package is pulled in by a default-on useflag and installs itself into cron.daily. BEFORE it runs the first time it outputs said message and asks for permission to proceed (which cannot be done in the cron job obviously but we'd find a way).)
>
> Sorry, but NO. *If you want you can make a big noise message that asks
> users to install the cron-job but opt-out is not an option here.
>
>
>
> --
> Thomas Kahle
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~tomka/
>