[Lazarus] Lazarus platform "popularity contest"

[Florian Klaempfl]

Am 11.08.2010 21:46, schrieb Ger Remmers:
> On Wednesday 11 August 2010 07:07:21 Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>> Bernd Kreuss wrote:
>>> On 10.08.2010 22:29, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>>>> I don't know how anybody else feels, but I'd have no objection to a
>>>> "popularity contest" extension which submitted anonymous platform
>>>> details
>>>
>>> This would be cool! Maybe even FPC itself could create these statistics.
>>> Something like this with really big numbers (after aggregating all
>>
>>> users) would look quite impressive:
>> I have to say that I don't know how to write this sort of thing, either
>> from the point of view of Lazarus or from the point of view of making it
>> acceptable to users rather than looking like intrusive spyware.
>>
>> But I think the really useful thing, far more than just aggregating
>> number of lines of code, would be picking up when somebody tried to
>> compile either Lazarus itself or an app for a specific CPU/OS/widget
>> set, including cases where that combination failed.
>>
>> How many people get Lazarus (on any platform) and try it out without
>> joining the mailing list or commenting on a project forum? Of these, how
>> many drop it because they have a problem compiling a project? How can we
>> find out where the problem areas are, without getting feedback from
>> these anonymous users?
>>
>> If we had- for example- aggregated statistics for "This copy of Lazarus"
>> on one of the about tabs, how could we also roll in e.g. somebody
>> attempting to build Lazarus from the command line (make clean bigide)
>> who found it didn't work because he'd got the wrong version of the KDE
>> libraries (been there done that)?
> 
> To be brutally honest, I don't like any form of "ET, phone home" things in a 
> program. 
> 
> Why not? 
> Because it is nobodies business [how / if / what for] I or anybody else uses 
> the compiler. 

I agree with this. But we've to life with its downsides: We've no clue
in what directions the compiler should be pushed. The mailing or bug
lists are a bad indication for this: just imagine 90% of the users use a
certain compiler package but never have problem with it, so no bug
reports and no mailing list posts. So we decide, ok, let's dump this
particular release type/package, it seems nobody is interested in it.

It boils down to: you usually hear only form unsatisfied customers and
seldomly from the satisfied.

> It has been put out there as open source, no strings attached.

Actually free software ;)