Live data from Hacker News

Telemetry is now optional in Warp

warp.dev

1–10 of 72 posts

Re: Telemetry is now optional in Warp

#2
> At this time, Warp continues to require login.

I don't want to stoke the flames again, but even VS Code doesn't force you to log-in. Microsoft knows that blocking you from using basic functionality of a free app is a bad user experience. It's good that you're letting people opt-in to a more private experience, but that was hardly the largest problem I could see the last time this was brought up.

From where I'm standing, it looks like you're trying to build a terminal for a pretty small audience; people who own a Mac, but don't want to use iTerm2 or the builtin terminal. That leaves a markedly tiny audience of people who don't use custom shells/incompatible configurations, want to log-in to your application and don't care about any of iTerm2's extra features. It's a bit of a pipe-dream to be honest, and you're not helping yourself by delaying your versions for other platforms.

My intention is not to discourage you, but I think this project needs a little tough love. You might be optimizing for the wrong users.

Re: Telemetry is now optional in Warp

#3
I don't think something as fundamental a developer tool as a Terminal makes sense as a proprietary software. That doesn't mean nobody will use it, obviously, but it does mean that you guys are sacrificing a lot of potential users for...I have actually no idea why Warp isn't open source. What's the issue? What are you afraid of?

Re: Telemetry is now optional in Warp

#6

Might draw some people in. I'm of the opinion that my terminal is one of the most important things to keep safe - a closed source terminal is not safe to me.

Hi - thanks for the comment. We are planning to first open-source our Rust UI framework, and then parts and potentially all of our client codebase. The server portion of Warp will remain closed-source for now. You can see how we’re thinking about open source here: https://github.com/warpdotdev/Warp/discussions/400

As a side note, we are open sourcing our extension points as we go.

The community has already been contributing new themes (https://github.com/warpdotdev/themes). And we’ve just opened a repository for the community to contribute common useful commands. See: https://github.com/warpdotdev/workflows

Hope you find this helpful!

Re: Telemetry is now optional in Warp

#7
post #3

I don't think something as fundamental a developer tool as a Terminal makes sense as a proprietary software. That doesn't mean nobody will use it, obviously, but it does mean that you guys are sacrificing a lot of potential users for...I have actually no idea why Warp isn't open source. What's the issue? What are you afraid of?

Hi, Jess from Warp here.

As a response to your questions, please see how we’re thinking about open source here: https://github.com/warpdotdev/Warp/discussions/400

As a side note, we are open sourcing our extension points as we go.

The community has already been contributing new themes (https://github.com/warpdotdev/themes). And we’ve just opened a repository for the community to contribute common useful commands. See: https://github.com/warpdotdev/workflows

Re: Telemetry is now optional in Warp

#8
post #2

> At this time, Warp continues to require login. I don't want to stoke the flames again, but even VS Code doesn't force you to log-in. Microsoft knows that blocking you from using basic functionality of a free app is a bad user experience. It's good that you're letting people opt-in to a more private experience, but that was hardly the largest problem I could see the last time this was brought up. From where I'm stan…

Thank you for the very thoughtful comment. The required login I think is enough to scare me off. Which is a shame. It’s the first time I’ve heard of this terminal and the features listed intrigue me enough to want to explore more.

Re: Telemetry is now optional in Warp

#10
post #5

My current terminals, iTerm2, xfce4-terminal, and Alacritty, don’t have telemetry. What am I missing out on here?

Seriously, what the actual fuck?

Have enough developers really been conditioned to accept surveillance and pervasive centralized control that someone thought this was a good idea? The fact that the telemetry code even exists is a problem - both in case of a bug that turns it on, and what it says about the proclivities of its developers.

It's utterly inappropriate to refer to this as "the Rust-based terminal", as if the language is its distinguishing feature. More like "the obscene SaaSification of a basic foundational utility". I'd be very much interested in trying a new terminal written in Rust, which could presumably be quicker and have a smaller chance of hiding latent parsing bugs, but this most certainly is not that.

Post reply on HN