Hi Mirko. I am wondering why a free and open source software community would > use a corporation's spyware like Google Analytics on their users.
While I can understand the sentiment, I don't have an issue with free software projects using Google and other webmaster tools and services on their websites. Many free software projects do use these tools. Many don't, I assume because their philosophy is to only use free software (as in the fsf.org / GPL four freedoms sense). While I can't speak for the Koha community web team, my thought would be that when the koha-community.org website was setup in early 2010 Google Analytics was the only real game in town (unless you like log file analysis). Google Analytics also doesn't require any additional hosting resources (remembering that the services/servers etc that provide the Koha community infrastructure are provided by community members and support companies, at their cost). Now there are more alternatives to choose from, including Piwiki and services offered by other companies. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_analytics_software I think it is great that the site is using Piwik - it is a great product that is improving quickly, provides good information, is easy to use, and you 'own' the data. However, whether we like it or not, Google Analytics is very ubiquitous on the web today. Many organisations use it. Most would be reluctant to give it up - if they do consider other options they would most likely run it side-by-side for some time to see how they compare. I would not classify it as 'spyware', no more so than any other cookies set by websites. What information does Google Analytics collect? Google Analytics is implemented through a cookie which is placed on the visitor's computer along with code in the webpage which collects visitor data and relays it to Google's servers for processing. It generally collects: - IP addresses - Geographical location of the IP address - Pages visited - How the visitor arrived at the webpage - Computer information, such as the operating system, screen size, browser browser being used. That does not mean that there are not any privacy issues. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics#Privacy_issues for information on some of these. For people concerned about privacy there are options to block it (search Google for more options 8-' ): http://www.brighthub.com/guides/google-analytics.aspx minus the "give all your data to an > evil corporation"-part -- if you think analysing Koha users is > neccessary. > I'm not in the Google is an "evil corporation" camp, and think this is a more extreme view. There is the http://www.dataliberation.org/ if you are concerned about Google's dominance and practices. The purpose of web analytics, whatever the tool, is not analysing users per se. It is about how people are using your website, whether it is helping you achieve your goals, finding out what they are looking at and for, how to improve it and make it a better experience. I would be happy to do this if the data was available, from whatever source. I would appreciate a discussion about the why and personally prefer > these things to disappear so I am able to send people to the > community website in good conscience. > The Koha community uses free software for everything I can see at koha-community.org: Wordpress for the website, Wikimedia for the wiki, Bugzilla for bug (and feature) tracking, Git for revision control, Mailman for mailing lists, Jenkins for continuous integration testing, Linux as the operating system that Koha runs on, Perl and all the associated modules, translation using Pootle, etc. Koha community members come from across the spectrum in terms of awareness of free software. Many are very strong free software supporters. There are also probably many community members who don't have such strong views, but use and contribute to Koha because it is great software, has many benefits for them and their organisation, and is free. I would imagine many also use non-free software, whether by choice or because of the policies of the organisations they work for. Koha offers a great free software product and community. It is developed in a very open and transparent way and reflects the best aspects of free software, in the truest sense. Promoting your website (any website, not just for free software projects) and understanding how your 'customers' use it are important parts of having a web presence, especially for a world-wide community. The Google webmaster tools used (Google Analytics; G+ - for promoting Koha, a good thing since there is often confusion between koha-community.org and the fork; Google search - searching across the koha-community.org sites e.g. site, wiki, manual, mailing lists, irc logs etc.) all play a useful part in this, whether free software or not. The Koha community also uses other "non-free" web services to promote Koha e.g Twitter, Youtube. While there are alternatives for some of these ( http://libreprojects.net/), it requires community members to propose them, work on them, and probably in some cases pay for them, especially where hosting is required. Should the Koha community have a privacy statement to address any concerns about privacy? I'm not sure if one is required. I'm also not sure how easy it would be to do, as community members come from countries with different privacy laws, requirements and cultures. It would require someone to propose it as an RFC on the wiki, to develop one, and get approval a general IRC meeting ( http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_meeting,_13_June_2012). I think I've rambled enough now...... David Nind | david.n...@gmail.com PO Box 12367, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand 6144 h. +64 4 9720 600 | m. +64 21 0537 847 | w. +64 4 8906 098 Note: I am an individual fsf.org member, use Ubunbtu as my desktop of choice (closely followed by Debian), use Piwiki and other free software e.g. Drupal, Firefox, LibreOffice. I also use Windows and other non-free software when I have to, although my first preference is to look for and use free software. _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
