FS#71313 - [gpsbabel] Please disable tracking

Attached to Project: Community Packages
Opened by Johannes Wienke (languitar) - Sunday, 20 June 2021, 09:38 GMT
Last edited by Buggy McBugFace (bugbot) - Saturday, 25 November 2023, 20:09 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Upstream Bugs
Status Closed
Assigned To Balló György (City-busz)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:

gpsbabel contains a tracker for determining which of its modules are used at runtime. Other Linux distributions have disabled this tracking code, which potentially conflicts with GDPR. It would be nice if the Arch package could also include the respective patch to avoid user tracking in a CLI tool.

A patch can, for instance, be found in the Fedora package files: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/gpsbabel/blob/rawhide/f/0002-No-solicitation.patch
This task depends upon

Closed by  Buggy McBugFace (bugbot)
Saturday, 25 November 2023, 20:09 GMT
Reason for closing:  Moved
Additional comments about closing:  https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/p ackaging/packages/gpsbabel/issues/1
Comment by Eli Schwartz (eschwartz) - Sunday, 20 June 2021, 12:08 GMT
  • Field changed: Status (Unconfirmed → Assigned)
  • Field changed: Category (Packages → Upstream Bugs)
  • Task assigned to Balló György (City-busz)
This appears to completely disable something which is usually offered as a user preferences knob.

Of note, the preferences dialog describes the statistics reporting as "Anonymously report usage data." so there's a non-terrible chance that it is, you know, in fact anonymous. Did you check before reporting? (Maybe they have a privacy policy about this, somewhere?) Have you considered asking upstream to make this off by default, if it isn't already?

The version check is hardly a terrible thing, it's not uncommon for programs to do so and it performs a useful function even on Arch, since the result may be users flagging the package out of date.

I think it's considerable overreach to prevent users from manually toggling these options on, particularly the version check.

Please figure out some upstream resolution that does NOT involve adding custom downstream patches to be haphazardly spread on the sly via word of mouth between some small subset of linux distros!
Comment by Johannes Wienke (languitar) - Sunday, 20 June 2021, 14:57 GMT
> I think it's considerable overreach to prevent users from manually toggling these options on, particularly the version check.

The patch would only change the default value to opt out of tracking by default.

I can see whether an upstream solution is possible if that's always the arch policy.
Comment by Buggy McBugFace (bugbot) - Tuesday, 08 August 2023, 19:11 GMT
This is an automated comment as this bug is open for more then 2 years. Please reply if you still experience this bug otherwise this issue will be closed after 1 month.

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