Hi all,
I am really interested in tracking how many people are using my software and was wondering what people that would be a good and ethical way of doing it. Any thoughts?

Richard
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Get a mailing list, count how active it is?

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I am really interested in tracking how many people are using my software

and was wondering what people that would be a good and ethical way of doing it. Any thoughts?

- Require registration prior to using your software
- Send background HTTP request during installation
- Recording ip address who downloads

Every way has its own drawback and none are 100% reliable, just pick whatever you prefer.

Richard Mace wrote

Hi all, I am really interested in tracking how many people are using my software and was wondering what people that would be a good and ethical way of doing it. Any thoughts?

quite many "call home" packages are quickly removed over here unless they are extremely important and required... in those cases, they are blocked from making the call... this mainly because of privacy concerns... it is no one's business when someone executes a program or how long they are running it or other metrics that may be divined from certain "call home" connections... in some areas of the world, the use of timestamps in messaging is illegal because of the possibility of tracking when someone may be at home or work...

if you really desire this information, make it configurable so that those who don't care can enable it if they like... it should be disabled by default, though...

waldo kitty wrote

if you really desire this information, make it configurable so that those who don't care can enable it if they like... it should be disabled by default, though...

+1
I don't like "call home" software either.

On a side note:
We did once, for internal franchise testing only, added Google Analytics [yes, what you normally use for websites ;-) ] into our desktop application. Different areas of our desktop application was tracked like different web pages in a website. :) Our product was a total rewrite of a previous version with lots of redesigned areas. We wanted to collect data to see what areas in the new program is used a lot, what isn't etc. That way we could tweak the user interface based on where our franchisees get "stuck" or missing out on useful features. We did give them training, but you know how it goes.... in by the one ear, out by the other. :)

Regards,
- Graeme -

Thanks for everyone's reply.
Really valuable.

Richard

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Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I don't like "call home" software either.

Is such not commonly called a virus ?

-Michael

Michael Schnell wrote

Is such not commonly called a virus ?

No, a virus normally does harm - "call home" software is more of a privacy concern.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Michael Schnell wrote

On 07/23/2015 07:01 PM, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote: > I don't like "call home" software either. Is such not commonly called a virus ?

Not really, sometimes it's just your browser

http://lwn.net/Articles/651118/

follow to https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/07/msg00226.html ...

-Michael

el es

It's usually implemented as a 'send anonymous statistics' option in most programs.