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Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

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Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#21

Post by hgsgm »

Uvix wrote: post #18
pjc50 wrote: post #5

Reminded of a post I saw the other day referencing Clausewitz to say "if your ideal military strategy is politically unachievable, it's not the ideal strategy". If going for opt-out telemetry makes your customers hate you and you're forced to retreat under a hail of fire, going opt-in is not a mistake. There's also a philosophical problem in going too deep into "customers don't know what they want" and A/B testing ev…

In that scenario, not going opt-out is not a mistake. But going opt-in probably is a mistake, because the data will be useless, so it’s a waste of time to implement.

Why would data be useless?

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#22

Post by oplaadpunt »

yalue wrote: post #10

Here's an idea for how to maintain Go moving forward: keep making the damn tool however you want. The thing never would have existed in the first place if they had started with an industry survey. It was created to address a perceived need, by the people with the need, for themselves. This model is perfectly fine moving forward. Some industrial user wants a new Go feature or bugfix? Great. If it's enough of a problem…

I really appreciate this point, and I think it applies very broadly. Good design comes from a coherent, individual (or group) vision. Citing examples will only incite discussions, because everyone has a different needs and ideas, but the things I most appreciate in tech and art share this common aspect.

As I see it, relying on excessive telemetry, surveys, focus-groups, etc is a bit of an indication that nobody at the top has a strong idea of where to take the project.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#23

Post by junon »

hgsgm wrote: post #19
junon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new owners of Audacity did this and then gaslit the community about it for weeks, despite constant, almost unanimous backlash.

It's right there in the name. But the creators (someone trying to be "owners" of sowmth5 that is just a name, lol) has the foresight to make it free and open source, so we have Tencity, the original software with a new name.

I'm not sure what it is you're saying.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#24

Post by UncleEntity »

remus wrote: post #13
speedgoose wrote: post #8

Respecting the users wishes isn’t a mistake. For sure it may have a few digits less of accuracy in some dashboards but who cares. The consensus was that opt-in was the best solution, and thankfully Google went with the best solution.

> For sure it may have a few digits less of accuracy in some dashboards but who cares. You could argue that it's ultimately the users who suffer. Telemetry helps guide development, so it's harder for developers to know what to focus their efforts on.

Reminds me of the whole walrus operator python thing.

People were using it, they took it away (IIRC, could be wrong about that), people whined, they brought it back as an explicit operator, people really whined and the BDFL walked away.

Telemetry would have told them what exactly?

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#25

Post by mseepgood »

yalue wrote: post #10

Here's an idea for how to maintain Go moving forward: keep making the damn tool however you want. The thing never would have existed in the first place if they had started with an industry survey. It was created to address a perceived need, by the people with the need, for themselves. This model is perfectly fine moving forward. Some industrial user wants a new Go feature or bugfix? Great. If it's enough of a problem…

> if they had started with an industry survey

They already do regular surveys.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#27

Post by Jailbird »

hgsgm wrote: post #21
Uvix wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that scenario, not going opt-out is not a mistake. But going opt-in probably is a mistake, because the data will be useless, so it’s a waste of time to implement.

Why would data be useless?

I'd say there are times when bad data is worse than no data. Consider that the farther away you get from it, the parties involved are either unaware or unwilling to treat it as bad data, so they make make harmful decisions.

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#28

Post by tired-turtle »

junon wrote: post #23
hgsgm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's right there in the name. But the creators (someone trying to be "owners" of sowmth5 that is just a name, lol) has the foresight to make it free and open source, so we have Tencity, the original software with a new name.

I'm not sure what it is you're saying.

(to have the audacity to do something unacceptable)

Re: Making Go telemetry opt-in is a mistake

#30

Post by richbell »

str3wer wrote: post #11
iforgotpassword wrote: post #2

> For every kilobyte of Go code available on GitHub, GitLab, and other Git forges, there are unknowable megabytes of private Go code that will never see the light of day (or maybe they will if LAPSUS$ decides to make that company a target). > Without knowing what ports of Go are used, the Go team can’t make sure that the right time is spent on maintaining those ports. Am I being overly pragmatic if not selfish for th…

also why mentioning a group of kids that bought stolen employee credentials and got arrested for it?

It's a joke referring to their practice of dumping companies' internal source code publicly.
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