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Comment by moondev | Hacker News Reader

After going through the contents of https://get.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh it seems to want to overwrite my docker daemon.json, then sets up a UUID for telemetry. I decided to just manually run the docker container (this should be clear in your README, please don't try to abstract away what this is doing behind a script)

After launch I was then greeted with a login/registration page. Seems kind of backwards to require this when you are targeting the self-host crowd. Too much friction to try this out.

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Yeah, it is clear based on the script that it sets up an UUID just to show how many instances are used (see the landing page). But you are right, I add a state why it is used.

About the registration, I do not understand it. Ofc, you need to register to your own instance, otherwise how you could use it, especially as a team? Each team member needs to register.

You're in Hungary, right? I do think that like any EU country, you need explicit informed consent to gather analytics like that, and offer a way to opt out (for example via setting an env var)

Thanks for the suggestion!

Yes, I'm from Hungary. I will add an opt-out feature, but I do not think it is an analytics thing. It is used to count installed instances on the frontpage. That's all.

You most likely process PII (IP address) that is not strictly required to run the service by doing so. There is clear precedence in the GDPR for this. Doesn't matter if you call it analytics or not.

I simply don't think the number of installs is a compelling piece of information, not the least because it is gamed everywhere. To me it says one of two things: "someone installed it," or "developer spun up a zillion micro instances to juke the stats." Nothing personal, it's the reputation of the data itself.

Maybe show a warning that the install script enables telemetry by default and implement https://consoledonottrack.com/. Users who do not wish to participate in telemetry can set the DO_NOT_TRACK=1 environment variable before running the script.

Nice! Thanks for the suggestion! I will implement this!

Appreciate your digging.

The above is why I won't try this. Thanks for posting, avoiding.

Hello,

I have 2 questions:

1. Is the entire collection of telemetry data a problem, or just the fact that you can't opt out of it?

2. How would you like to be informed about the collection of telemetry data? (let's say for a CLI tool). I'm a founder at https://stacktape.com, and we're also collecting telemetry. We have a specific docs section on what/how we collect (https://docs.stacktape.com/user-guides/telemetry/), and how to opt out of it. We also have it stated in our privacy policy on our web. Is this enough? Or should we do something like print it to the terminal the first time you use the CLI?

No OP, but:

1) Telemetry that is ON by default is what I don't like. Not being able to opt out makes me uninstall/disable/unregister it.

2) I don't want to read documentation about a "feature" I couldn't care less about (i.e., telemetry)

Lmarcos below this is spot on.

How about not doing telemetry at all? Maybe surveys?

Anything that advertises itself for self hosting should do no telemetry. If I sign up for your cloud offering then fine but don’t spy on me and my hardware and my use cases.

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