[asterisk-dev] Asterisk Beacon Module Proposal

[Russell Bryant]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 8:05 PM, Matthew Jordan <mjordan at digium.com> wrote:

> Suggestion 1: Make the module opt in instead of opt out.
>
> In most cases, I would normally agree with this proposal, as I
> personally prefer an opt in model instead of an opt out model.
> Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can think of a way where this suggestion
> would work with Asterisk - where work implies that a meaningful number
> of people are presented with the option to opt in in a consistent
> fashion. Unlike a number of other projects, Asterisk does not have:
> * A consistent way in which it is downloaded or deployed. Asterisk is
> built from source; obtained from upstream distro packages; from the
> project packages; from ISO distributions; and more. All of these can
> determine what is presented during the process, and the Asterisk
> project itself has little control over those mechanisms.
>

I think this is generally true for virtually every open source project.


> * A UI that can present a user with a single, one-time only option to
> 'opt in'. This is in contrast to say Operating Systems or anything
> running with any kind of installation UI.
>

Even operating systems don't have a consistent deployment method.   There's
lots of ways to do it and the installation UI isn't used for much beyond
laptops and one-off test systems.  Production systems are generally some
sort of automated install or done with pre-built images.

Anyway, my point is that I don't think Asterisk is terribly unique here,
either.


> Personally, I'd like some way to present any user of Asterisk with a
> one-time only, non-annoying "please help the project and opt in"
> question, and then move on forever. Unfortunately, I don't have a good
> idea on making this suggestion work. If the only way to opt in is to
> provide a .conf file and set "enable = true", then I can't see
> anywhere near sufficient numbers of people being aware of the
> configuration choice, much less making the choice to enable it, to
> justify the creation of the module itself.
>
> If someone has a good proposal on making the suggestion work, then I'd
> love to entertain it further.
>

I feel that "opt-out" is fundamentally wrong from a privacy perspective.
Further, I think the potential backlash and resulting damage to the project
is pretty severe.

I also don't think "opt-in is hard" is an acceptable reason not to do it.
If it's too hard to make an opt-in solution useful, then maybe it shouldn't
be done at all.  This sort of thing really doesn't seem very common, and
this is probably a big reason why.

One alternative would be to issue periodic user surveys that are promoted
on the mailing lists, twitter, etc.  I don't think you'll ever get a
reliable "absolute numbers" measure.  A survey could still produce useful
relative numbers and help identify some trends over time.

-- 
Russell Bryant
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