Comment 1 for bug 612460

I could see making this an optional feature. I tend to agree with the position that data collection is something that would be a negative, but I think that you make a most excellent point here about it being information that can be useful to show that the HIG can be changed to fit the user's wishes, as long as the users are the ones initiating the change.

Before I could close this bug, I would need to have a couple of things:

  * Code in AllTray to send off usage stats periodically.
  * Code on a server that can take those usage stats and display them.

There would need to be more detailed information about what types of data to collect, what types of data to throw away, and what types of data to report on. I'm open to commentary about such things. My initial impression would be that the data transmitted would include the IP address (implicitly, since that's going to be in the packet in the first place), the user's account name on their system, and usage statistics about AllTray (when it was started, how long it runs for, what applications are used with it, which desktop environments/window managers are used with AllTray, and what operating system it's being used on). I think that such data would be useful indeed, and when it is compiled into a report, some of the information would be generalized (for example, I would not be showing user's IP addresses, but more likely use the IP addresses to be able to sort by region or something), and users could choose to omit their user names from reporting or something.

What do you think about that idea? Have you any more suggestions on what sort of information might be useful?