"Setting Windows version to winxp Executing early_wine regedit c:\winetrickstmp\set-winver.reg Install of msi2 done You gave the --optin option, so reporting 'msi2' to the winetricks maintainer so he knows which winetricks verbs get used and which don't. Use --optout to disable future reports. winetricks done. " Not sure what this is supposed to be. Is it saying that the developer is getting usage reports by default? If so how nasty is that. I did nto use the -optin option, it sounds like it is --optin by default. Quite disgusting, whatever that is .
James McKenzie
2011-Feb-27 03:25 UTC
[Wine] Is winetricks sending reports to the developer?
On 2/26/11 8:19 PM, kartal wrote:> "Setting Windows version to winxp > Executing early_wine regedit c:\winetrickstmp\set-winver.reg > Install of msi2 done > You gave the --optin option, so reporting 'msi2' to the winetricks maintainer so he knows which winetricks verbs get used and which don't. Use --optout to disable future reports. > winetricks done. > " > > Not sure what this is supposed to be. Is it saying that the developer is getting usage reports by default? If so how nasty is that. I did nto use the -optin option, it sounds like it is --optin by default. Quite disgusting, whatever that is .No, the developer should not get reports as this is a privicy issue that was discussed a long time ago. If winetricks does report them, they go to Dan Kegel, who is a regular poster here who can provide more information on what, if anything, he does with the reports. Hopefully, he will chime in and confirm what I said above. I've never seen a report from winetricks in the three years I've used it. James McKenzie
James, No one seems to give a damn about people`s privacy nowadays thus it is important for people to speak against. I really hope that someone who is involved with a wonderful project like Wine is not anyway involved with invasion of privacy. We are yet waiting the developer to respond.
I don't watch the forums constantly, it's the last thing I check after reading wine-patches/wine-devel/wine-bugs. winetricks definitely does not send usage info unless the user opts in. To see whether the user opted in, do cat ~/.cache/winetricks/track_usage If that says "1", then the user opted in. When winetricks' gui first runs, it displays an opt-in dialog. You can see this by doing rm ~/.cache/winetricks/track_usage Try that now and see what happens! The user can always opt out by running winetricks --optout I can imagine one scenario which could cause the reported problem; perhaps the user pressed just the right key just as that dialog was coming up. (Sounds like another wishlist item for zenity - make it display the dialog for a few seconds before letting the user dismiss it.) The usage data is there so I can know which verbs are most popular, so I can make sure to not break them :-) Reported usage (from opted in users only) for the top 16 verbs during February was: 4609 d3dx9 3541 corefonts 3014 vcrun2005 2986 ie6 2678 dotnet20 2550 ie8 2502 gdiplus 2439 directx9 2421 winxp 2042 d3dx9_42 2035 vcrun2008 1981 ie7 1981 d3dx10 1969 vcrun6 1864 gecko 1840 d3dx9_36 Note that the competing wine frontend PlayOnLinux gathers usage stats from all users, not just opted-in users, so winetricks is more protective of privacy in this regard. POL stats are at http://www.aplu.fr/polistats/stats_2011.html#list_get_num and the numbers there are a lot higher, probably partly because they're for all POL users, but mine are only for winetricks users who opted in (possibly because of an unfortunate keystroke or mouse click during the opt-in dialog, as noted above).
Dan Thanks for the follow up and proper instructions on how to check it. I was not implying that the author was collecting data for some mean purposes. My point is that everyone needs to have the right to privacy, they care or not. There might be times where one`s privacy might become important. If some people do not care about privacy, that is fine with me. The conclusion from some people not caring about privacy should not sound like "we do not need" privacy. Some people think that "I have nothing to hide so I dont give a damn about it", which is total garbage thinking. Privacy has nothing to do with right to hide harmful behavior. The privacy is about one`s right to own his or her own life, the data, unpredictability of daily routines etc. I really hope that people stop reasoning invasion of privacy in various ways. It took a long time to gain rights, we should not loose that easily. In that respect I would appreciate that if you can make whatever collecting more obvious and more transparent. The reason I saw the option because I was running directly from the shell. If that was not the case I would not have known about it. On the other hand thanks for installing applications such easy. It is definitely great tool, and I am sure it took great efforts to write it. thanks