231–240 of 285 posts
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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.
The issue is that it they changed the agreement suddenly, and held user's data hostage until they "agreed". I don't know why you think that's ethically ok to hold user data hostage until they agree to give up more rights. It's borderline ransom.
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GDPR pretty much says "you can't do that". The advice I have bookmarked (which I'll admit is not a legal opinion or the source legislation) says: ‘specific website content’ means that you should not make ‘general access’ subject to conditions requiring users to accept non-essential cookies – you can only limit certain content if the user does not consent; and the term ‘legitimate purpose’ refers to facilitating the p…
There is some potent American law lurking about, so I'm not going to assume the GDPR is enforceable in ways untested in U.S. court.
It won't even go to US court, but to EU one.
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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…
My understanding was that Gitlab wanted to collect your data to improve their product. Gitlab could have collected anonymous data, with opting out of collection as the default, and promised not to sell it if they seriously believed it was about improving their product. Plenty of products record telemetry data only if you opt in to the program. Users understand and often accept that. That approach would have generated…
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There is some potent American law lurking about, so I'm not going to assume the GDPR is enforceable in ways untested in U.S. court.
If a company does business in Europe, they must comply with GDPR. It' doesn't matter where they are located. It won't even go to US court, but to EU one.
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…
I recall they setup some blog page with explanations, so obviously they expected push back. Part of my work is making sure policies, code, etc. are compliant. Notifying compliance for such changes should be a standard procedure as well. In this regard I can't understand how the entire process went through, as GDPR challenge should have been expected.
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Telemetry is necessary to be able to observe the system, and look for adverse impact. You should be more thoughtful to the people supporting the tools you use, because without telemetry they do a bad job keeping it working for you.
If anything, the deterioration of quality in most modern software is a proof that telemetry makes people do bad job at keeping software working for its users.
You want a counter-example? Reddit has very little telemetry and quite famously barely looks at the data it does gather. You want to talk about deterioration, how's that for some severe rot.
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 should really be praised... Without further, congratulations to everyone protesting against this gitlab move. This is something that should be done years back when google started with its tracking, same with facebook. This was the behaviour that should be seen each and every time some company wants to take advantage of its users. But to my sadness it is rarely seen. So once again congratulations to each and ever…
Why Gitlab wanted to do this I have no idea, sounds like some marketing people came up with such idea "because everyone is doing this"?
Tracking wasn't going to bring much revenue, if any, so they could just get rid of that, trying to turn it into some positive PR. The cynic in me tells me that if they smell any significant money from tracking they would tell HN and the rest to back off (or would added some convoluted way to opt-out from tracking).
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What should really be praised... Without further, congratulations to everyone protesting against this gitlab move. This is something that should be done years back when google started with its tracking, same with facebook. This was the behaviour that should be seen each and every time some company wants to take advantage of its users. But to my sadness it is rarely seen. So once again congratulations to each and ever…
It's a tiny SaaS that depends on customer good will. A few hundred pings did the job because we matter. If only this worked with giant corps. FB has around 2.4 billion MAU and a few nerd rants won't be noticed the next time they screw the user and a handful complain.
Goldman Sachs valued it close to $3b.
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My understanding was that Gitlab wanted to collect your data to improve their product. Gitlab could have collected anonymous data, with opting out of collection as the default, and promised not to sell it if they seriously believed it was about improving their product. Plenty of products record telemetry data only if you opt in to the program. Users understand and often accept that. That approach would have generated…
opt-in telemetry does not allow you to draw statistical conclusions because your data is skewed/incomplete due to selection bias. This is why developers are so intent on opt-out, it ensures that they have more accurate data to drive their roadmap. Clearly there are going to be privacy concerns with this, so they really need to minimize how much identifiable information they collect, and then communicate to users what…
No amount of vague promises over how good you will be and how nice you'll treat your users' information should be enough to make this acceptable. We have a huge body of evidence informing us that trust is a fundamentally bad idea when it comes to a corporation.