Popularity Contest

[Head_on_a_Stick]

is it really opt-in?

Yes, it is. And the default option is "no":

The package popularity-contest is spyware

No, it isn't. Spyware, by definition, conceals it's presence and intention from the user but popcon clearly announces it's presence and intention and also offers a means to disable it afterwards, if the user doesn't want it any more (as can be seen in my screenshot).

Furthermore, the statistics are collected anonymously with the only identification being a randomly-generated machine ID.

More here: https://popcon.debian.org/README

And here: https://popcon.debian.org/FAQ

popcon is a bit like a hostage situation for packages. "turn the service on, or the package gets it!"

So you agree that it would be good if MX offered users the option to enable popcon then?

The sysvinit-core package currently languishes at a mere 1.11% of installations[1], MX's inclusion would change that significantly.

[SwampRabbit]

Per Debian's stated benefits:

Niche packages, which might not be very popular in stock Debian, could be more actively used in a specialised derivative distribution. Having adequate popcon statistics in Debian would guarantee that the package would not be removed from stock Debian, thus offloading maintenance burden on the interested derivative

This does highly benefit MX and anitX users in the fact that sysVinit and the shim would get some attention. That's if you take their "guarantee" as something to take to the bank.

I've never opted-in on my plain jane Debian installs myself, but one has to wonder if doing so would help keep some of the niche packages alive, or put some emphasis on package maintainers putting in more time an effort to certain ones.

Right now I'm packaging (Stevo is going to help with the stubborn ones) a bunch of dependency packages for a certain package because Debian package maintainers aren't building them upstream.
Lately, we've had a lot of users asking for packages that don't exist in Debian or derivatives. Just saying this because it takes a bit more starting from scratch.

Did you know that some Debian package maintainers go request funding upstream to sponsor and maintain packages? (yeah shocked me too) We're down here doing it for free, we can use some attention upstream imho.

[Stevo]

Well, the Pale Moon devs have had some of their donations specify that part of the funds go to third-party packagers such as myself, but I've asked them to make the donations to MX instead.

[freemedia2018]

So you agree that it would be good if MX offered users the option to enable popcon then?

as an option? it would be difficult to argue with that. but i dont think it should "offer" unless people know what it is. theres a sane way to do it, probably a few.

i never felt passionately about popcon, as it was not enabled by default. nor should it be, but as an option? why not?

[JayM]

Did you know that some Debian package maintainers go request funding upstream to sponsor and maintain packages?

What's upstream of Debian? I thought Debian was its own stand-alone distro, not a "based on" derivation of something else. Or do you mean they request funding from the likes of the GTK, Xfce, Gnome and KDE projects, stuff like that?

[SwampRabbit]

Did you know that some Debian package maintainers go request funding upstream to sponsor and maintain packages?

What's upstream of Debian? I thought Debian was its own stand-alone distro, not a "based on" derivation of something else. Or do you mean they request funding from the likes of the GTK, Xfce, Gnome and KDE projects, stuff like that?

Sorry, that was bad wording on my part. I don't know where or at what level specific funding is coming from.

What I was trying to get at is that there are folks at levels above us who do a lot of good work to make sure popular or much used packages get built.
Resources get allocated for it; people, time, and funding. Me, personally, while I knew a lot of things like kernel and major application development gets funded... didn't know normal packaging did.
Someone stated to me the other day that they "got funding to continue packaging something". I wasn't sure if they meant they wouldn't help if they didn't get funding or what, I can't speak to that.

But it sorta shocked me because, like Stevo was getting at, we're down here working on MX for users as a labor of love more than anything.

The whole popcon discussion made me think, "well if folks up at higher levels knew there was a greater need for certain things, maybe its a good thing because they'd request resources so they could do the last part of that benefit statement I posted":
offloading maintenance burden on the interested derivative

I get some people make a living off of doing FOSS work, which is good, and is how it should work. I'm just saying that maybe things like popcon help make that happen, because without showing a definitive need, it won't happen.

[JayM]

@SwampRabbit: thanks for the clarification.

@everyone: I've installed it and opted in to Debian's survey. I normally wouldn't do something like that but I think I can trust Debian not to harvest my personal or other data beyond what they say Popularity Contest does.

If it becomes preinstalled in future versions of MX I strongly suggest that the user be prompted whether or not to opt in at their first login, including when booting from a live USB, and that something be added to MX Tweak that when selected runs dpkg-reconfigure-popularity-contest (as root or sudo) to let them opt out (or in) should they change their mind later. The MX Manual and FAQ would need to be updated to explain what the popularity contest package is and does, and assure users that it's not spying on them, and point them to MX Tweak. Maybe d_o could make a quick video that explains it too?

Then we'd of course have to prepare ourselves for the deluge of forum posts about it by people who didn't Read The Fantastic Manual or the FAQ or search the forum prior to posting (as usual), as well as rants by unreasonable people and/or paranoiacs complaining either that, basically, something they personally dislike shouldn't have been included in the distro because the universe is of course all about them, or that MX is evil incarnate because it contains "spyware" and is going to steal their credit card number, wreck their car and kill their dog. (Such is life.)

[Mauser]

MX Linux would be better off without that spyware.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

^ it's not spyware...

I think I can trust Debian not to harvest my personal or other data beyond what they say Popularity Contest does.

No need to trust them, the source is freely available and comprises of perl, python & shell scripts. There are no binary executables in the package.

To get the source and analyze it yourself add a deb-src line to your sources then run

Code: Select all

apt source popularity-contest

The actual work is done by a cron job: https://gist.github.com/Head-on-a-Stick ... a6b7d2292e

As you can see, it just sends the output of /usr/sbin/popularity-contest (run as the nobody user) to Debian.