[R] Size of R user base

[Prof Brian D Ripley]

On 20 Apr 2004, Peter Dalgaard wrote:

> kjetil at entelnet.bo writes:
>
> > On 20 Apr 2004 at 10:47, Philippe Grosjean wrote:
>
> > > Of course, this will only work with computers connected to the
> > > internet,... but at least, it could be one way to evaluate the number
> > > of R users. Would that be an infringment of Open Source, or any other
> > > rule of freedom? I don't know, but it does seem to be quite widespread
> > > (at least for commercial software). so, why an Open Source software
> > > would not be able to monitor the number of users?
> >
> > That would make R into spyware, and there exist software to monitore
> > and warn aganst/automatically remove spyware, and some users have
> > such installed (and it will grow).
>
> Not quite spyware. Spyware generally works in more covert ways and
> tries to hide itself from the user.
>
> However, quite a few people think that having programs connecting to
> places on the internet without being asked is annoying and a potential
> invasion of privacy and it may even cost people money if they're on a
> dialup non-flat-fee connection.

It is possible to ask: I mentioned pine, which does, and so do some perl
installers.

I don't think people would mind if the rw1091.exe installer had an option
(ticked by default) to `call home', but I don't think we would learn enough
for this to be worth setting up.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595