This is beyond stupid for GitLab.
The _PAID_ self-hosted instances will have non-optional telemetry that loads remote javascript inside an enterprise? Any enterprise that seriously wants to self-host will look at this statement and flip a table.
The _PAID_ self-hosted instances will have non-optional telemetry that loads remote javascript inside an enterprise? Any enterprise that seriously wants to self-host will look at this statement and flip a table.
Blog post isn’t the best way to collect feedback. Just ask your customers directly.
10 bad title on internet is enough to screw your reputation on 10m developers that probably don’t even follow up the story or even don’t bother to read anything beyond Reddit titles and comments. But then you have 10m developers telling their managers “Oh Gitlab isn’t good”.
We're in the process of taking a 50user Premium (aka self-hosted) GitLab subscription, don't make us reconsider and search alternative means.
[0] https://edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-r...
ps: SOC2 does not inspire confidence as the whole of EAA needs to follow GDPR.
This doesn't seem like you're pumping the breaks "completely".
It's baffling to me that you would try to run telemetry on self-hosted PAYING customers. Seems totally backwards.
This means they would have to change the ToS before trying to implement it again, which means the current result isn't moving the goalposts at all and is not a step forwards to the original solution.
See: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... and https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...
I don't know what did you expect?
Of course the feedback is negative. You obviously knew it would be because you made that blog post in the first place. Three months from now you'll have made some cosmetic changes while still collecting basically all the data you wanted. Eventually you'll be ramping up to roll this into your enterprise offering. I'll do another round of source control tool research and hopefully be able to move gitlab to the NRND list in internal documentation.
That's how it will go, because that's how these things always play out. The world will keep spinning.
I see only one option: remove all telemetry and make a blogpost about why that idea was bad that you will not implement it. And even doing so harm is already done. Now you can minimize harm by making such post as fast as possible.
Nevertheless I do think this is different since management defers decisions about software versioning and life-cycle management in general to developers. I do think this will cost them some hard earned customers.
Certainly a bad move and I doubt it will amortize.
However, I'm relatively sure that this is due to the efforts of our very talented Windows Systems Administrators. Nonetheless, it's possible.
The business has to be sold on Gitlab by the developers.
Are you aware of the privacy concerns surrounding reCAPTCHA? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA#Criticism
> We are not adding Pendo or Snowplow JS snippets to self-hosted versions at this time. We are carefully considering the appropriate opt-out functionality for telemetry that will work best for our customers, and we will clearly communicate to those customers when any change is made.
In other words, it's not that self-hosted will not be affected, it's that self-hosted will not be affected yet. That's an important distinction.
A lot of services, newsletters, promo, telemetry, are by default opt-out. When you install some chat app, it also syncs some data (e.g. contacts maybe?) and then you can go in the settings and opt-out for that sync..
Let's be real here, the difference between opt out and in is probably several orders of magnitude worth of data. It's like, would you rather have a Megabyte of telemetry to analyze or a Gigabyte?
Since a few weeks, our hackerspace - which used to publish all door unlocks on IRC with the nickname of the person unlocking it, by default - requires opt-in for nicknames to be published.
People recognize that this is an important social function of the space, because it ties together the IRC channel and the physical space, and thus the vast majority(!) of members have explicitly opted in.
This whole narrative that "if you make it opt-in, not enough people would ever do it" always conveniently leaves out that that's only true for things where people don't want to opt in, ie. usually things that benefit the service but not the users.
Small companies are generally more trustworthy, until they come to a position of dominance, where they are just there to squeeze.
Our enterprise security people would complain about data exfiltration risk. GitLab would only survive if the security people approve it & that is a LOT of extra work for the internal team that keeps GitLab sold within the company.
There's your problem. This should be entirely opt-in.