On 01/05/2014 15:43, Pascal Chevrel wrote:
Looking at the Piwik site, it seems some big companies like T-Mobile use
it, I know the volume we have on mozilla.org so maybe Piwik doesn't
scale *yet* to out needs, but this is an open source project and as
such, fixable, and that doesn't mean that we have to fix it ourselves
btw. What I am afraid of is that we just picked google because of the
NIHSV syndrom (Not Invented Here in the Silicon Valley ;) ).
It seems pretty obvious that running your own analytics system has
non-zero cost in terms of hours spent by both volunteer and employee
contributors, whereas an out-of-the-box solution provided by a third
party does not. I've seen several IT/web team folks, in several
situations, refer to the cost (in man hours, not dollars) of everything
they have to run, a lot of it not being central to our mission. The
ability to use a third party (irrespective of who they are) seems pretty
compelling. The previous discussion about this subject was public and
happened on the newsgroups/mailing lists (and I followed it at that
time, at which I was not an employee). Therefore, I don't think your
allegation of NIHSV syndrome makes any sense (and is somewhat insulting
because it's suggesting people haven't spent any time to consider this
decision, or did it in private when it was, in fact, public).
I think there is a disconnect between how employees see stuff and how
our community and users get to conclusions with the same data.
Employees, especially in the US were culture seems to be very focused on
contracts and private law, think that as long as a contract is signed
and exists between two companies, the problem is fixed. Our community
members don't trust those contracts,
You mean our volunteer community members? Employees are just as much
part of the community, thank you very much. And, I'm sorry, but as a
longtime volunteer and now (somewhat recent) European employee, I am
skeptical that people getting an employment contract suddenly have a
massive change of heart over how trustworthy contracts are. Don't try to
make this about "employees vs volunteers", please.
The trust our community has in us is not a given, it exists because we
have demonstrated in the past that we do good. When our community is
warning us that in some areas, we are breaking their trust and they see
a profound disconnect between our messaging and our actions, I think we
should listen to them and not discard their opinion just because
decisions are easier to take around the coffee machine among employees,
all living in the same area, from the same universities, with similar
As far as I know, there are no other employees that went to the
university I got my MSc at (Imperial College, London -- I suspect some
went to University of Amsterdam (where I got my BSc) at some point, but
I'm not sure, and there'd definitely be <10), nor other people that live
in Birmingham (which probably just shows they're more sensible than me).
Certainly my direct colleagues are exclusively in other countries.
Please don't stigmatise employees, it's very hurtful both to the actual
employees and to the image volunteer contributors have of employees, and
doesn't do anything to further the "trust our community has in us" (who
is "our" and "us" in that sentence, anyway?)
I'm really worried about making this discussion out to be about whether
people in our community are employed by MoCo/MoFo or not. It isn't (and
if people feel we do need another discussion about this distinction or a
lack of communication or anything more general, please start another
thread).
It's about:
a) whether we trust Google to live up to their contractual obligations;
b) whether we think those contractual obligations are good enough both
in terms of actual fact, and in appearance to the outside world;
c) what alternatives we have, and whether they are better when
considering (a), (b) and the associated costs/rewards of the alternatives.
Different people seem to have different opinions on (a) and (b), but so
far nobody has seriously discussed (c). Just throwing up a name (or
looking at their website) and saying "why don't we use this?" isn't
serious discussion. If you're arguing it's better than GA, explain why,
and try to seriously estimate switching and running costs, not just the
PR implications or the suppositions that Google might be lying to us all.
I haven't looked into the details of (c) recently, but I imagine that
others have. In particular, I trust other members of the community
(volunteer or employee) to make good, informed decisions about their
areas of expertise/work, and to get the necessary privacy reviews and so
on. It seems unhelpful to speculate before those people have even
weighed in.
~ Gijs
PS: Just so we're clear, I work on Firefox for desktop and have nothing
directly to do with the decision to use GA or something else for this
particular part of our web properties, besides being a community member
with an opinion (which I will not share because so far there is not
enough data to see if that opinion makes sense, so discussing it seems
pointless).
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