[R] Number of download.

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why would this be evil? For R, for example? I've already read some
> objections to this on r-help, but I'm not sure I understand the
> reasons. As long as the 'ping' happens once, at first start,
> anonymously, and requires confirmation from the user, I do not see an
> issue with the behaviour.

I did say 'without telling the user'.

This kind of behaviour got its bad name from closed-source software
'phoning home'  and raising privacy concerns since nobody could tell
what the seemingly random stream of bytes heading off your computer
consisted of.

 This kind of behaviour seems acceptible:

 > library(foo)
 Foo library would like to report its usage to foo.com. Would you like
it to do this every time you
 use it? No personal data about you or your computer is transmitted [y/N] Y
 Reporting use of library(foo) at 12:34:56 7-8-2010 to foo.com

 Then next time:

 > library(foo)
  Reporting use of library(foo) at 12:34:56 7-8-2010 to foo.com
  To stop usage reporting, do foo.reporting("off")

Barry

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