Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

gitlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 285 posts

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

#171

Post by cellar_door »

z92 wrote: post #87
tjoff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was done. There even was those small banners that said something in the way of "if you have gmail I won't mail you" etc. Thing is, the broader public don't care. The difference between gitlab and gmail is primarily that developers care more about this stuff and value their code more than most people care about their email. They are also much more informed in the matter, most using gmail haven't got a clue.

There's a difference between gitlab and gmail. People pay for gitlab while gmail is free. Google can easily declare "either you take it for what it is, or leave." Gitlab can't.

My understanding was that Gitlab wanted to collect your data to improve their product. Google is collecting your data to sell ads.

I understand the reticence towards third party telemetry, but refusing basic interaction tracking for a product you pay for is just hurting yourself, even if you're already satisfied with the service. You don't go to the doctor for a checkup and then refuse bloodwork. Obviously there are rules around privacy for medical records that don't exist for interaction tracking. But I don't think the solution should be to get rid of tracking entirely, it should be to extend reasonable privacy rights and protections to our online data.

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

#172

Post by bongobongo »

z92 wrote: post #87
tjoff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was done. There even was those small banners that said something in the way of "if you have gmail I won't mail you" etc. Thing is, the broader public don't care. The difference between gitlab and gmail is primarily that developers care more about this stuff and value their code more than most people care about their email. They are also much more informed in the matter, most using gmail haven't got a clue.

There's a difference between gitlab and gmail. People pay for gitlab while gmail is free. Google can easily declare "either you take it for what it is, or leave." Gitlab can't.

Gitlab has an excellent free plan, in fact it’s so good I honestly don’t understand how they can afford it and doubt it will last (but really hope it will for individual developers). They even give you Docker registries and thousands of CI hours.

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

#174

Post by mobjack »

jamiequint wrote: post #166

This is incredibly dumb. Both Pendo and Snowplow are analytics providers, meaning they both have in their TOS that the company remains the owner of the data in question and that the services only exist to facilitate analysis of the data in question. Effectively this is users complaining that Gitlab wants to simplify their data analysis overhead. Presumably nothing precludes them from sending the exact same data to th…

There is a lot of FUD whenever someone mentioned third party because many don't know the difference between a dedicated analytics provider and Facebook.

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

#175

Post by dx87 »

notJim wrote: post #117
mkl wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm, that must be where the breakdown is. It seems like you view just the transaction as your interaction with Gitlab, but to me if I'm on Gitlab, I'm still "in the shop" so to speak. So to me it's more like sitting in a coffee shop than going to the grocery store.

One of the big issues people had with the Gitlab proposal was that it was going to use 3rd party trackers, so Gitlab wouldn't have full control over your data. Some people were commenting that if the analytics data never left Gitlab, they wouldn't have an issue with it. They were also going to block access to your account until you accepted the tracking.

Following the shopping analogy, it'd be like they let you in the store, but they won't let you leave with your purchase until you fill out a survey by a 3rd party company.

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

#176

Post by entropic »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #137
EpicEng wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let me make it clear for you then: > Their CFO showed that he has little regard for the privacy of their users. Their users are companies, who can put on their big boy pants and decide what they think of Gitlab earnestly gathering usage information, not deep personal secrets, that it uses to help it improve its own product so that it can better serve the customer. Throwing this all under the same category of "privacy…

People store copyrighted code and trade secrets in their repositories with gitlab, if the third party tracker is compromised those secrets can also be compromised.

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

#177

Post by orf »

jamiequint wrote: post #166

This is incredibly dumb. Both Pendo and Snowplow are analytics providers, meaning they both have in their TOS that the company remains the owner of the data in question and that the services only exist to facilitate analysis of the data in question. Effectively this is users complaining that Gitlab wants to simplify their data analysis overhead. Presumably nothing precludes them from sending the exact same data to th…

I think part of the issue was that there are many cases where you can't send potentially sensitive information to a third party, regardless of their TOS.

I left a comment on the feedback issue about this. It's not as comprehensive as a third party, but you can build your own analytics in house. There are a lot of managed services (like BigQuery) that make it significantly easier to implement it yourself, and you do get valuable insights from such data.

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

#178

Post by flukus »

jamiequint wrote: post #166

This is incredibly dumb. Both Pendo and Snowplow are analytics providers, meaning they both have in their TOS that the company remains the owner of the data in question and that the services only exist to facilitate analysis of the data in question. Effectively this is users complaining that Gitlab wants to simplify their data analysis overhead. Presumably nothing precludes them from sending the exact same data to th…

The main issue was that this is for internally hosted enterprise instances, so no they can't just pass along the same data on the backend because they don't control the environment the backend is running in.

In the hosted gitlab, if they want to keep me as a paying customer they should be looking at on premise analytics providers. If there going to be sending data out to random third parties I don't trust, who I can't trust because I have never heard of them and have no relationship with, then I can't trust gitlab either.

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

#179

Post by godzillabrennus »

derf_ wrote: post #155
z92 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between gitlab and gmail. People pay for gitlab while gmail is free. Google can easily declare "either you take it for what it is, or leave." Gitlab can't.

A lot of institutions used to run their own e-mail. Over the years I've watched as my e-mail addresses (both universities and my current employer) have been replaced by Gmail on the backend. All of them stopped being willing to manage e-mail themselves. None of them were willing to use a less surveillance-oriented provider. That choice wasn't made by consumers. It was made by the same kind of informed IT people. I su…

I remember when Dartmouth ran blitz mail... when google talk supported jabber... when people complained mostly about MAPI...

It’s a shame that so many innovations are being squashed in communication because of the “free” price for cloud solutions.

Google is learning so much about students thanks to this program.

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

#180

Post by dbcurtis »

jacquesm wrote: post #124
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…

The CFO is not in charge.

Yet, the CFO was given authority to make an important product decision, over the objections of engineering and product design. Can you name any successful tech company that sells a highly technical product to a highly technical audience that give the CFO final decision authority on product decisions -- decision authority over and above marketing, product design, and engineering?

The root-cause screw-up here is delegating product decisions to F&A. A good CFO adds huge value to a company, but should not have final decision authority over product decisions. That is not the role of a CFO. Any company that makes it so is organizationally dysfunctional from the C-suite down.

Post reply on HN