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Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

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Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#121

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

mkl wrote: post #111
notJim wrote: post #105

I find the anti-telemetry attitude honestly kind of confusing. I mean, you know that the shops you go to know what products you're buying from them, right? Presumably those shops look at that data in aggregate when thinking about which products to stock. How is this any different? If you're transacting with someone, it's not possible to hide that transaction from them. Of course you should have the right to have that…

Web tracking is different in that it's ongoing tracking of behaviour. When I buy something from a shop, that's the end of their knowledge: the shop has no idea what I use it for.

When you make non-cash purchases in a shop they sell your purchase data to an aggregator who adds it into their profile of you and derives demographic classifications from that.

Single woman driving a Subaru? Your odds of being lesbian go up a few points. We'll target you for a certain form of advertising.

This has been going on for decades. Before the web ever existed.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#122

Post by PacifyFish »

Maybe I've missed the boat, but what's the big deal about collecting telemetry?

You already trust Gitlab with everything you store in Gitlab, like source code, which is presumably much more sensitive than the number of times you loaded a page or clicked on a button or whatever.

Is it because the data would be stored with a third party, and you don't trust that third party? If Gitlab trusts the third party, and they're giving you the option to NOT trust the third party and only trust Gitlab, what's the issue?

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#123

Post by jacquesm »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #118
EpicEng wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their CFO showed that he has little regard for the privacy of their users. I highly doubt that has changed. Many devs and compliance folk were on the right side of this in the MR and feature threads, but they were overruled. I highly doubt the CFO has changed his viewpoint, and he's still in power over there. They only backtracked after the "insane" reaction. They anticipated some amount of pushback, but obviously ho…

Privacy? Their users are companies building software. The CFO is right -- they can agree or disagree to the terms of use and choose whether or not to use the new software.

No, the CFO is dead wrong. I'm a very vocal Gitlab advocate and would have stopped promoting them if they did this. There are 100's if not 1000's of people like me and we help build Gitlab value. And then there is the GDPR to contend with.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#124

Post by jacquesm »

EpicEng wrote: post #92
tyre wrote: post #58

The reaction to this whole saga has been insane. Chill out people. They fucked up, users gave feedback, they listened. This isn't some corporate conspiracy, some grand ethical dilemma with an evil company on one side and some white knight hackers on the other. Let's imagine for a second that they are people trying to do the right thing, with years of history doing the best they can. They wanted to measure usage to ma…

Their CFO showed that he has little regard for the privacy of their users. I highly doubt that has changed. Many devs and compliance folk were on the right side of this in the MR and feature threads, but they were overruled. I highly doubt the CFO has changed his viewpoint, and he's still in power over there. They only backtracked after the "insane" reaction. They anticipated some amount of pushback, but obviously ho…

The CFO is not in charge.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#125

Post by bigiain »

mbesto wrote: post #84
cwkoss wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit surprised that Paul Machle is still employed as CFO.

Lesson learned here - the CFO is not and should not be responsible for a company's tracking policies and communication thereof.

Sadly, that "F" means they pretty much have veto power over anything anybody (with the possible exception of the CTO and the board) wants to do.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#126

Post by SamReidHughes »

EpicEng wrote: post #120
SamReidHughes wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy? Their users are companies building software. The CFO is right -- they can agree or disagree to the terms of use and choose whether or not to use the new software.

>Privacy? Their users are companies building software Not sure I follow your logic there. First of all, he's not right. As stated by the compliance officer in that thread, his plan would have violated the GDPR. It also would have violated existing contracts with enterprise customers. Secondly, it's a scummy thing to do. just because you have the right to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do.

I'm not talking about existing contracts or the law in some far-off land, and neither are you. You deserve nothing. You aren't entitled to Gitlab releasing software the way you'd like them to. Maybe your brain tells you otherwise. Instead, just don't use their software. For example, I wish Windows 10 didn't have telemetry. But it does, so I don't use Windows 10.

The world doesn't owe you a free Git issue tracker.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#127

Post by SamReidHughes »

jacquesm wrote: post #123
SamReidHughes wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy? Their users are companies building software. The CFO is right -- they can agree or disagree to the terms of use and choose whether or not to use the new software.

No, the CFO is dead wrong. I'm a very vocal Gitlab advocate and would have stopped promoting them if they did this. There are 100's if not 1000's of people like me and we help build Gitlab value. And then there is the GDPR to contend with.

The only sense in which he's "wrong" is as you describe: people won't want to use the software, and it's a bad decision when it comes to making money. He's not wrong on some principles-based reason.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#128

Post by ageofwant »

jbk wrote: post #27

We received an apology email at the same time, well written, explaining what they did wrong, apologizing, promising to do a post-mortem, promising to not send to 3rd party trackers, and saying they did a mistake and waiting for feedbacks on the issue tracker. And with very little BS in the mail. Such level of transparency, of apologizing and clarity, especially written at the first person "I am truly sorry." is very…

What concerns me is how it got to the point of having to apologize in the first place. It implies a level of disconnect and and corporate group-think that is fundamentally misaligned with core customer expectation of what is in essence a community enabling system. How did Gitlab end up with a set of managers that ever thought this would fly ? They clearly were completely surprised by their customer's reaction - something that almost any of Gitlab' users would have understood viscerally.

This level of management disconnect does not bode well for Gitlab, as a paying customer this worries me...

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#129

Post by EpicEng »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #126
EpicEng wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Privacy? Their users are companies building software Not sure I follow your logic there. First of all, he's not right. As stated by the compliance officer in that thread, his plan would have violated the GDPR. It also would have violated existing contracts with enterprise customers. Secondly, it's a scummy thing to do. just because you have the right to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do.

I'm not talking about existing contracts or the law in some far-off land, and neither are you. You deserve nothing. You aren't entitled to Gitlab releasing software the way you'd like them to. Maybe your brain tells you otherwise. Instead, just don't use their software. For example, I wish Windows 10 didn't have telemetry. But it does, so I don't use Windows 10. The world doesn't owe you a free Git issue tracker.

Oh, so you're not talking about the two ways in which he is objectively wrong in arguing to implement this feature, only that a vendor has the right to add user hostile terms to their ToS. Ok, well you've convinced me!

Honestly, who here is arguing that they can't implement some form of this? No one. Exactly no one. We don't like what it, and we're the consumer! It's not entitlement to pushback when a vendor changes their terms in a way you don't like.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#130

Post by Madeindjs »

jbk wrote: post #27

We received an apology email at the same time, well written, explaining what they did wrong, apologizing, promising to do a post-mortem, promising to not send to 3rd party trackers, and saying they did a mistake and waiting for feedbacks on the issue tracker. And with very little BS in the mail. Such level of transparency, of apologizing and clarity, especially written at the first person "I am truly sorry." is very…

You can read email content on this issue https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5672
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