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Comment by moondoge | Hacker News Reader

Be aware, before downloading:

This application will not run without providing an e-mail address. It also forces data collection.

I will not use such software.

@moondoge, if you don't want to provide your mail, just write anything in this field, we do NOT validate it in any way. However, we would be very thankful if you provide your real mail address, so we can track how Luna is used and improve the experience. Every data we collect is described here: http://www.luna-lang.org/alpha-data.html . We try to collect only insensitive data, that tell us how Luna is used and how well it performs.

Software that collects and sends back any form of information is a big no-no unless it's opt-in. It's not acceptable when vscode does it. It's not acceptable when .net-core does it. It isn't acceptable when Luna does it.

If you want your users to help you learn how Luna is used and preforms in real environments, you ask for them for feedback rather than forcefully extract it.

Having telemetry enabled by default (or much worse, being mandatory) is disrespectful. It's also a fairly good indicator of what you think of your users.

I totally agree with you on the mandatory part, I’d hope it would be widely accepted that opt-in is the way to go in such cases.

Although I need to point out there’s a huge difference between what people say vs what they actually do (see https://www.nngroup.com/articles/first-rule-of-usability-don...) and I can’t imagine an effective product development process that ignores the actual usage data.

I find your comment much more "disrespectful" than telemetry enabled by default. Did you read the mention that it was done for beta phase ? If you're not happy with that, then do not use beta, ask politely if it can be removed or made optional for final release, and stop whining and acting disdainfully.

Collecting insensitive data and wanting users' email addresses are two different things.

> if you don't want to provide your mail, just write anything in this field, we do NOT validate it in any way.

So why don't you just make it a non-required field? I don't appreciate your attitude towards user privacy, so I will never use any of your products.

@executesorder66 I am sorry if you feel we don't respect our user's privacy. We do and we are always searching for the best solution. We did not make the field optional, because we were sure it will not be a problem when testing the beta product. We will release soon a fix which would allow you to progress without providing the mail. The anonymous usage statistics will be optional and disabled by default when Luna will hit the stable release. Does it solve your issue?

Thanks for your response. I was honestly not expecting one.

> We will release soon a fix which would allow you to progress without providing the mail.

If this happens, then you have indeed solved my issue, and restored my confidence in the human race. Thank you.

Of course we will do it. We are building this product for years and we are releasing it as Open Source project because we believe we can truly impact how people are able to process data. We do this because we want to contribute with Luna to how you currently work. In other words, we really do Luna for you, our users. We have to collect data to know if we are heading in the right direction, that's all. If we collect it in such way that it disturbs you, then we have to fix that! Here is related issue I've created for it: https://github.com/luna/luna-manager/issues/118

I do not promise it will be resolved tomorrow, because we've got some high priority bugs regarding windows installation, but I'll ask our team to resolve it faster than later.

Also be aware that it's a beta. It's not necessarily an evil thing to want to get feedback on your software from those who are interested.

Then why make opting-out of telemetry consent so obtuse?

It's a beta. You're helping them test it, so them collecting usage/statistics is completely fair. If you don't want to take part in the beta testing, don't install the beta and wait for the full release (which the creator said elsewhere in the thread won't require email or data collection).

In saying that, I do think a sentence above the email field saying "By taking part in this beta, you're helping us collect data to improve the product for final release, which will not require your email address or do data collection unless opting in" or some such.

It's still in beta. It's common for betas to do that, so you can have enough information to fix problems that might occur. Unless the beta is already a RC and is basically just released for advertising reasons...

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