Discussion:
[Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
Tino Pyssysalo
2018-02-22 11:04:14 UTC
Permalink
Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry



---
Tino Pyssysalo
Senior Manager

The Qt Company
HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
33100 Tampere, Finland
***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>
+358 40 8615475
http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>

The future is Written with Qt
---
Tuukka Turunen
2018-02-22 13:14:14 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.

Yours,

Tuukka

From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry



---
Tino Pyssysalo
Senior Manager

The Qt Company
HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
33100 Tampere, Finland
***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>
+358 40 8615475
http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>

The future is Written with Qt
---
Simon Hausmann
2018-02-22 13:26:57 UTC
Permalink
Hi,


Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?


(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)


Simon

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator




Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

Hämeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Ryein Goddard
2018-02-22 13:39:38 UTC
Permalink
This might be nice to make pretty charts to show to managers, but to be
completely honest I think it is 100% useless.  If you don't know what
people are using your software for, or how then you aren't communicating
with them.  You know once upon a time companies just talked with people
to figure out what they wanted and what they were having difficulties
with.  Why not just take a few surveys a year?

On 02/22/2018 08:26 AM, Simon Hausmann wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>
> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin /
> frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to
> and how is it accessible to the community?
>
>
> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>
>
> Simon
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Development
> <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of
> Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
> *Sent:* Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
> *To:* Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org;
> ***@qt-project.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for
> telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>
> Hi,
>
> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name?
> This item could be useful also for other applications.
>
> Yours,
>
> Tuukka
>
> *From: *Qt-creator
> <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of
> Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
> *Date: *Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
> *To: *"qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
> *Subject: *[Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in
> Qt Creator
>
> Description:
> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to
> help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design
> mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to
> the user.
> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>
> ---
>
> Tino Pyssysalo
>
> Senior Manager
>
> The Qt Company
>
> HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
>
> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>
> ***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>
>
> +358 40 8615475
>
> http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>
>
> The future is Written with Qt
>
> ---
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qt-creator mailing list
> Qt-***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
Konstantin Tokarev
2018-02-22 13:42:55 UTC
Permalink
22.02.2018, 16:39, "Ryein Goddard" <***@gmail.com>:
> This might be nice to make pretty charts to show to managers, but to be completely honest I think it is 100% useless.  If you don't know what people are using your software for, or how then you aren't communicating with them.  You know once upon a time companies just talked with people to figure out what they wanted and what they were having difficulties with.  Why not just take a few surveys a year?

Well, there are things that are hard to report via survey, e.g. rate of crashes or memory leaking in clangbackend

>
> On 02/22/2018 08:26 AM, Simon Hausmann wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?
>>
>> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>>
>> Simon
>> ----------------------------------------
>> From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
>> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
>> To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
>> Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>>                              Tuukka
>>
>> From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
>> Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
>> To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
>> Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>>
>> Description:
>>
>> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
>>
>> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
>>
>> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>>
>> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Tino Pyssysalo
>>
>> Senior Manager
>>
>> The Qt Company
>>
>> Hämeenkatu 14 C 25
>>
>> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>>
>> ***@qt.io
>>
>> +358 40 8615475
>>
>> http://qt.io
>>
>> The future is Written with Qt
>>
>> ---
>>
>> _______________________________________________ Qt-creator mailing list Qt-***@qt-project.org http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
> ,
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qt-creator mailing list
> Qt-***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator


-- 
Regards,
Konstantin
Ryein Goddard
2018-02-22 13:44:34 UTC
Permalink
I think memory leaks and different backends should be tested by Qt.
Customers/Users are not your beta testers.

On 02/22/2018 08:42 AM, Konstantin Tokarev wrote:
>
> 22.02.2018, 16:39, "Ryein Goddard" <***@gmail.com>:
>> This might be nice to make pretty charts to show to managers, but to be completely honest I think it is 100% useless.  If you don't know what people are using your software for, or how then you aren't communicating with them.  You know once upon a time companies just talked with people to figure out what they wanted and what they were having difficulties with.  Why not just take a few surveys a year?
> Well, there are things that are hard to report via survey, e.g. rate of crashes or memory leaking in clangbackend
>
>> On 02/22/2018 08:26 AM, Simon Hausmann wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?
>>>
>>> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>>>
>>> Simon
>>> ----------------------------------------
>>> From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
>>> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
>>> To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
>>> Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.
>>>
>>> Yours,
>>>
>>>                              Tuukka
>>>
>>> From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
>>> Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
>>> To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
>>> Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>>>
>>> Description:
>>>
>>> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
>>>
>>> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
>>>
>>> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>>>
>>> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Tino Pyssysalo
>>>
>>> Senior Manager
>>>
>>> The Qt Company
>>>
>>> Hämeenkatu 14 C 25
>>>
>>> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>>>
>>> ***@qt.io
>>>
>>> +358 40 8615475
>>>
>>> http://qt.io
>>>
>>> The future is Written with Qt
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________ Qt-creator mailing list Qt-***@qt-project.org http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
>> ,
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Qt-creator mailing list
>> Qt-***@qt-project.org
>> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
>
> --
> Regards,
> Konstantin
Marco Bubke
2018-02-22 13:54:33 UTC
Permalink
> Well, there are things that are hard to report via survey, e.g. rate of crashes or memory leaking in clangbackend


We have a crash handler in the works, which is much more useful than this. And memory leaks can simply be investigated simply by debugging. I don't see how this plugin could help here. Anyway, we disabled the crash recovery already, so most memory leaks should be gone.

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+marco.bubke=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Konstantin Tokarev <***@yandex.ru>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:42:55 PM
To: Ryein Goddard; Simon Hausmann
Cc: ***@qt-project.org; qt-***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



22.02.2018, 16:39, "Ryein Goddard" <***@gmail.com>:
> This might be nice to make pretty charts to show to managers, but to be completely honest I think it is 100% useless. If you don't know what people are using your software for, or how then you aren't communicating with them. You know once upon a time companies just talked with people to figure out what they wanted and what they were having difficulties with. Why not just take a few surveys a year?

Well, there are things that are hard to report via survey, e.g. rate of crashes or memory leaking in clangbackend

>
> On 02/22/2018 08:26 AM, Simon Hausmann wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?
>>
>> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>>
>> Simon
>> ----------------------------------------
>> From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
>> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
>> To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
>> Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>> Tuukka
>>
>> From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
>> Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
>> To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
>> Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>>
>> Description:
>>
>> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
>>
>> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
>>
>> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>>
>> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Tino Pyssysalo
>>
>> Senior Manager
>>
>> The Qt Company
>>
>> Hämeenkatu 14 C 25
>>
>> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>>
>> ***@qt.io
>>
>> +358 40 8615475
>>
>> http://qt.io
>>
>> The future is Written with Qt
>>
>> ---
>>
>> _______________________________________________ Qt-creator mailing list Qt-***@qt-project.org http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
> ,
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qt-creator mailing list
> Qt-***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator


--
Regards,
Konstantin
André Pönitz
2018-02-22 19:05:42 UTC
Permalink
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 04:42:55PM +0300, Konstantin Tokarev wrote:
> 22.02.2018, 16:39, "Ryein Goddard" <***@gmail.com>:
> > This might be nice to make pretty charts to show to managers, but to be
> > completely honest I think it is 100% useless. 

I fully subscribe to that.

> > If you don't know what people
> > are using your software for, or how then you aren't communicating with
> > them.  You know once upon a time companies just talked with people to figure
> > out what they wanted and what they were having difficulties with.  Why not
> > just take a few surveys a year?
>
> Well, there are things that are hard to report via survey, e.g. rate of
> crashes or memory leaking in clangbackend

Any number for a "measured" value for rate of crashes or memory leaks
is uninteresting for me when I run into the problem myself reqularly.
And trust me, I do.

As someone who has been working on Qt Creator for more than a decade I *do* know
about issues in the IDE by my own use of it, by the significant backlog of bug
reports in JIRA, and by interacting with (sometimes referred to as "talking to")
actual users.

The currently 399 open issues assigned to me personally would already be enough
to keep me busy for approximately a $WHILE, full time, not including time spent in
review processes etc.

I certainly do not need another input channel that makes me spent time on
guessing how the information that "user A spent at time B an amount of C minutes
working on project named D" will translate into making my work more efficient
nor in how to improve Qt Creator in general. In fact, I consider all of that
irrelevant and detrimental and would strongly prefer to *not* get access to such
information, and neither to anyone's interpretation what bug report this
information may relate to.

That makes a clear -1 from my side for technical reasons already.

Neither legal nor ethical considerations are likely to improve that.

Andre' (not speaking for any company etc etc)
Tomasz Siekierda
2018-02-22 20:01:59 UTC
Permalink
Another point: if you do collect usage data, please bear in mind that
sometimes a feature can be used very rarely, but still be vital. In other
words, do not consider a feature as "unnecessary" or "can be deprecated" if
it is not used often.

For example, I mostly do mobile and desktop apps, but I still do want the
remote linux deployment to work smoothly for rare occasions when I need to
use it.

On 22 February 2018 at 20:05, André Pönitz <***@t-online.de> wrote:

>
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 04:42:55PM +0300, Konstantin Tokarev wrote:
> > 22.02.2018, 16:39, "Ryein Goddard" <***@gmail.com>:
> > > This might be nice to make pretty charts to show to managers, but to be
> > > completely honest I think it is 100% useless.
>
> I fully subscribe to that.
>
> > > If you don't know what people
> > > are using your software for, or how then you aren't communicating with
> > > them. You know once upon a time companies just talked with people to
> figure
> > > out what they wanted and what they were having difficulties with. Why
> not
> > > just take a few surveys a year?
> >
> > Well, there are things that are hard to report via survey, e.g. rate of
> > crashes or memory leaking in clangbackend
>
> Any number for a "measured" value for rate of crashes or memory leaks
> is uninteresting for me when I run into the problem myself reqularly.
> And trust me, I do.
>
> As someone who has been working on Qt Creator for more than a decade I
> *do* know
> about issues in the IDE by my own use of it, by the significant backlog of
> bug
> reports in JIRA, and by interacting with (sometimes referred to as
> "talking to")
> actual users.
>
> The currently 399 open issues assigned to me personally would already be
> enough
> to keep me busy for approximately a $WHILE, full time, not including time
> spent in
> review processes etc.
>
> I certainly do not need another input channel that makes me spent time on
> guessing how the information that "user A spent at time B an amount of C
> minutes
> working on project named D" will translate into making my work more
> efficient
> nor in how to improve Qt Creator in general. In fact, I consider all of
> that
> irrelevant and detrimental and would strongly prefer to *not* get access
> to such
> information, and neither to anyone's interpretation what bug report this
> information may relate to.
>
> That makes a clear -1 from my side for technical reasons already.
>
> Neither legal nor ethical considerations are likely to improve that.
>
> Andre' (not speaking for any company etc etc)
> _______________________________________________
> Development mailing list
> ***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
>
Edward Welbourne
2018-02-23 10:54:56 UTC
Permalink
André Pönitz (22 February 2018 20:05)
> Any number for a "measured" value for rate of crashes or memory leaks
> is uninteresting for me when I run into the problem myself reqularly.
> And trust me, I do.

I trust you.
It is, however, possible your usage patterns of the UI are not typical;
consequently, you'll prioritise the bugs you see most often; which might
not be the bugs most often encountered by other users. Analytics may
give you the data to know the pain points everyone else is as acutely
aware of as you are of the pain points you meet most often.

> As someone who has been working on Qt Creator for more than a decade I
> *do* know about issues in the IDE by my own use of it, by the
> significant backlog of bug reports in JIRA, and by interacting with
> (sometimes referred to as "talking to") actual users.
>
> The currently 399 open issues assigned to me personally would already
> be enough to keep me busy for approximately a $WHILE, full time, not
> including time spent in review processes etc.
>
> I certainly do not need another input channel that makes me spent time
> on guessing how the information that "user A spent at time B an amount
> of C minutes working on project named D" will translate into making my
> work more efficient

The proposed system provides anonymised and presumably aggregated data;
so you won't be given, much less asked to evaluate, information about a
specific user A doing things at a specific time B; your objection is a
straw man. You'd be getting data on what proportion of users spend what
proportions of their time doing which things. In particular, knowing
which bugs bite most users most often might not be entirely useless when
it comes to prioritising which bug to fix first.

This won't enable you to write new features any faster or fix bugs any
faster; but it may enable you to prioritise the things that are causing
most pain to most users, and the things that would give the most win to
the most users. *That* is what analytics is good for. The fact that it
doesn't do a bunch of other things is beside the point, and no reason to
reject it out of hand.

Now, fortunately for you, most of the folk who use the product you work
on are in fact software developers, so may well have similar habits to
yours; so if the scope of this project is only Qt Creator, it may well
be a waste of time; and, if it's intended to be a more general tool,
this may also be a reason to *not* focus on Qt Creator as initial
test-bed, as seems to be the present plan - that's apt to skew what we
develop to be something that only works when the user-base thinks like
the developers, which is not where (honest, open, ethical) analytics is
at its best - where it reveals things to the developer that users see
all the time, but the developer never encounters.

Eddy.
Robert Löhning
2018-02-23 14:59:01 UTC
Permalink
Am 23.02.2018 um 11:54 schrieb Edward Welbourne:
> André Pönitz (22 February 2018 20:05)
>> Any number for a "measured" value for rate of crashes or memory leaks
>> is uninteresting for me when I run into the problem myself reqularly.
>> And trust me, I do.
>
> I trust you.
> It is, however, possible your usage patterns of the UI are not typical;
> consequently, you'll prioritise the bugs you see most often; which might
> not be the bugs most often encountered by other users. Analytics may
> give you the data to know the pain points everyone else is as acutely
> aware of as you are of the pain points you meet most often.
>
>> As someone who has been working on Qt Creator for more than a decade I
>> *do* know about issues in the IDE by my own use of it, by the
>> significant backlog of bug reports in JIRA, and by interacting with
>> (sometimes referred to as "talking to") actual users.
>>
>> The currently 399 open issues assigned to me personally would already
>> be enough to keep me busy for approximately a $WHILE, full time, not
>> including time spent in review processes etc.
>>
>> I certainly do not need another input channel that makes me spent time
>> on guessing how the information that "user A spent at time B an amount
>> of C minutes working on project named D" will translate into making my
>> work more efficient
>
> The proposed system provides anonymised and presumably aggregated data;
> so you won't be given, much less asked to evaluate, information about a
> specific user A doing things at a specific time B; your objection is a
> straw man. You'd be getting data on what proportion of users spend what
> proportions of their time doing which things. In particular, knowing
> which bugs bite most users most often might not be entirely useless when
> it comes to prioritising which bug to fix first.

If many users spend much time doing a "thing", does that mean that this
is most important to them? Or that it is most fun to do? Or does it just
mean that the design is so bad that they lose lots of time there and
can't use it efficiently?

> This won't enable you to write new features any faster or fix bugs any
> faster; but it may enable you to prioritise the things that are causing
> most pain to most users, and the things that would give the most win to
> the most users. *That* is what analytics is good for. The fact that it
> doesn't do a bunch of other things is beside the point, and no reason to
> reject it out of hand.
>
> Now, fortunately for you, most of the folk who use the product you work
> on are in fact software developers, so may well have similar habits to
> yours; so if the scope of this project is only Qt Creator, it may well
> be a waste of time; and, if it's intended to be a more general tool,
> this may also be a reason to *not* focus on Qt Creator as initial
> test-bed, as seems to be the present plan - that's apt to skew what we
> develop to be something that only works when the user-base thinks like
> the developers, which is not where (honest, open, ethical) analytics is
> at its best - where it reveals things to the developer that users see
> all the time, but the developer never encounters.
>
> Eddy.
> _______________________________________________
> Development mailing list
> ***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
>
Adam Treat
2018-02-23 16:19:45 UTC
Permalink
"If many users spend much time doing a "thing", does that mean that this
is most important to them? Or that it is most fun to do?"

Personally, I think we can table the discussion of how to interpret non-existent data for a plug-in that does not exist in a thread about whether to open a repo.

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+adam.treat=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Robert Löhning <***@qt.io>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 9:59:01 AM
To: Edward Welbourne; André Pönitz
Cc: ***@qt-project.org; qt-***@qt-project.org; Ryein Goddard
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

Am 23.02.2018 um 11:54 schrieb Edward Welbourne:
> André Pönitz (22 February 2018 20:05)
>> Any number for a "measured" value for rate of crashes or memory leaks
>> is uninteresting for me when I run into the problem myself reqularly.
>> And trust me, I do.
>
> I trust you.
> It is, however, possible your usage patterns of the UI are not typical;
> consequently, you'll prioritise the bugs you see most often; which might
> not be the bugs most often encountered by other users. Analytics may
> give you the data to know the pain points everyone else is as acutely
> aware of as you are of the pain points you meet most often.
>
>> As someone who has been working on Qt Creator for more than a decade I
>> *do* know about issues in the IDE by my own use of it, by the
>> significant backlog of bug reports in JIRA, and by interacting with
>> (sometimes referred to as "talking to") actual users.
>>
>> The currently 399 open issues assigned to me personally would already
>> be enough to keep me busy for approximately a $WHILE, full time, not
>> including time spent in review processes etc.
>>
>> I certainly do not need another input channel that makes me spent time
>> on guessing how the information that "user A spent at time B an amount
>> of C minutes working on project named D" will translate into making my
>> work more efficient
>
> The proposed system provides anonymised and presumably aggregated data;
> so you won't be given, much less asked to evaluate, information about a
> specific user A doing things at a specific time B; your objection is a
> straw man. You'd be getting data on what proportion of users spend what
> proportions of their time doing which things. In particular, knowing
> which bugs bite most users most often might not be entirely useless when
> it comes to prioritising which bug to fix first.

If many users spend much time doing a "thing", does that mean that this
is most important to them? Or that it is most fun to do? Or does it just
mean that the design is so bad that they lose lots of time there and
can't use it efficiently?

> This won't enable you to write new features any faster or fix bugs any
> faster; but it may enable you to prioritise the things that are causing
> most pain to most users, and the things that would give the most win to
> the most users. *That* is what analytics is good for. The fact that it
> doesn't do a bunch of other things is beside the point, and no reason to
> reject it out of hand.
>
> Now, fortunately for you, most of the folk who use the product you work
> on are in fact software developers, so may well have similar habits to
> yours; so if the scope of this project is only Qt Creator, it may well
> be a waste of time; and, if it's intended to be a more general tool,
> this may also be a reason to *not* focus on Qt Creator as initial
> test-bed, as seems to be the present plan - that's apt to skew what we
> develop to be something that only works when the user-base thinks like
> the developers, which is not where (honest, open, ethical) analytics is
> at its best - where it reveals things to the developer that users see
> all the time, but the developer never encounters.
>
> Eddy.
> _______________________________________________
> Development mailing list
> ***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
>
Edward Welbourne
2018-02-26 17:06:08 UTC
Permalink
Am 23.02.2018 um 11:54 schrieb Edward Welbourne:
>> The proposed system provides anonymised and presumably aggregated
>> data; so you won't be given, much less asked to evaluate, information
>> about a specific user A doing things at a specific time B; your
>> objection is a straw man. You'd be getting data on what proportion
>> of users spend what proportions of their time doing which things. In
>> particular, knowing which bugs bite most users most often might not
>> be entirely useless when it comes to prioritising which bug to fix
>> first.

Robert Loehning (23 February 2018 15:59)
> If many users spend much time doing a "thing", does that mean that
> this is most important to them? Or that it is most fun to do? Or does
> it just mean that the design is so bad that they lose lots of time
> there and can't use it efficiently?

You don't necessarily know - but you do at least know it sees a lot of
use, as distinct from the things that no-one uses. That, in turn, might
be because the thing doesn't work, or is too confusing; or it might mean
it does a thing no-one feels any need to do. However, you have now
separated two classes of feature from one another: you won't waste time
asking users why they never use the heavily-used feature; and you won't
assume that users know how to use the feature you know none of them use.

You'll have more information along with just "what proportion use which
features what proportions of the time"; some of this may help you to
distinguish between the various possible explanations. When you look
into the feature that no-one uses much, you may find that most users
that do use it have a crash report following close on the heels of their
use of it; you can make an educated guess at why they don't use it after
that. For another feature, users may methodically work their way
through the steps your tutoral for the feature outlined and never touch
it again; it's probagly useless.

You won't be throwing away your other ways of getting information from
users; you can ask them, in all the usual ways, what they like best and
what ticks them off about each feature. That's quite likely to
distinguish, among the ones that are commonly used, the ones that are
fun from the ones that are time-consuming pain points.

Data on how your users use your product can contribute to your
understanding of what questions to ask your users and what work to
prioritise. Like all data, of course, you have to use it intelligently
to get actionable information out of it; the possibility that you might
misunderstand it doesn't mean it's worthless; it *supplements* the other
sources of insight into how best to use your time, it doesn't replace
them.

All of which, of course, does depend on taking care that the process of
collecting the data does not, in itself, cause greater harm than the
benefits that you can glean from using the information, once collected,

Eddy.
Marco Bubke
2018-02-26 17:29:22 UTC
Permalink
Edward Welbourne:

> When you look into the feature that no-one uses much, you may find that most users
> that do use it have a crash report following close on the heels of their
> use of it; you can make an educated guess at why they don't use it after that.


We have already a crash reporter, which would provide us with that information.

I am pushing this since some time but we need a server installation. Sorry, with my

current experience I don't think that we need something much more complicated and

fuzzy if we don't get something simple like a crash handler working. And I only

speak about a customization of an already existing server and setting up the VM.

I have that done very long ago but nobody stepped in to productise it.


So I don't believe that we can fly to the stars if we cannot fly to the moon,

but it is much easier to dream about the stars than to go to the moon. 😉

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+marco.bubke=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Edward Welbourne <***@qt.io>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 6:06:08 PM
To: Robert Loehning; André Pönitz
Cc: ***@qt-project.org; qt-***@qt-project.org; Ryein Goddard
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

Am 23.02.2018 um 11:54 schrieb Edward Welbourne:
>> The proposed system provides anonymised and presumably aggregated
>> data; so you won't be given, much less asked to evaluate, information
>> about a specific user A doing things at a specific time B; your
>> objection is a straw man. You'd be getting data on what proportion
>> of users spend what proportions of their time doing which things. In
>> particular, knowing which bugs bite most users most often might not
>> be entirely useless when it comes to prioritising which bug to fix
>> first.

Robert Loehning (23 February 2018 15:59)
> If many users spend much time doing a "thing", does that mean that
> this is most important to them? Or that it is most fun to do? Or does
> it just mean that the design is so bad that they lose lots of time
> there and can't use it efficiently?

You don't necessarily know - but you do at least know it sees a lot of
use, as distinct from the things that no-one uses. That, in turn, might
be because the thing doesn't work, or is too confusing; or it might mean
it does a thing no-one feels any need to do. However, you have now
separated two classes of feature from one another: you won't waste time
asking users why they never use the heavily-used feature; and you won't
assume that users know how to use the feature you know none of them use.

You'll have more information along with just "what proportion use which
features what proportions of the time"; some of this may help you to
distinguish between the various possible explanations. When you look
into the feature that no-one uses much, you may find that most users
that do use it have a crash report following close on the heels of their
use of it; you can make an educated guess at why they don't use it after
that. For another feature, users may methodically work their way
through the steps your tutoral for the feature outlined and never touch
it again; it's probagly useless.

You won't be throwing away your other ways of getting information from
users; you can ask them, in all the usual ways, what they like best and
what ticks them off about each feature. That's quite likely to
distinguish, among the ones that are commonly used, the ones that are
fun from the ones that are time-consuming pain points.

Data on how your users use your product can contribute to your
understanding of what questions to ask your users and what work to
prioritise. Like all data, of course, you have to use it intelligently
to get actionable information out of it; the possibility that you might
misunderstand it doesn't mean it's worthless; it *supplements* the other
sources of insight into how best to use your time, it doesn't replace
them.

All of which, of course, does depend on taking care that the process of
collecting the data does not, in itself, cause greater harm than the
benefits that you can glean from using the information, once collected,

Eddy.
_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
***@qt-project.org
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
Marco Bubke
2018-02-27 12:12:35 UTC
Permalink
I was ask to provide more info about the crash dump server. It is called Socorro:

https://github.com/mozilla-services/socorro


<https://github.com/mozilla-services/socorro>

Like you can see it was developed originally for Firefox:

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrashers/?product=Firefox&version=58.0.2
<https://github.com/mozilla-services/socorro>


There are many statistics about crashes and the stack trace which is very helpful

for the developer to prioritize bug reports and fix crashes. We already have client support for

that in Qt Creator but we need a server instance where we can send the crash dumps.


________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+marco.bubke=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Marco Bubke <***@qt.io>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 6:29:22 PM
To: Edward Welbourne; Robert Loehning; André Pönitz
Cc: ***@qt-project.org; Ryein Goddard; qt-***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

Edward Welbourne:

> When you look into the feature that no-one uses much, you may find that most users
> that do use it have a crash report following close on the heels of their
> use of it; you can make an educated guess at why they don't use it after that.


We have already a crash reporter, which would provide us with that information.

I am pushing this since some time but we need a server installation. Sorry, with my

current experience I don't think that we need something much more complicated and

fuzzy if we don't get something simple like a crash handler working. And I only

speak about a customization of an already existing server and setting up the VM.

I have that done very long ago but nobody stepped in to productise it.


So I don't believe that we can fly to the stars if we cannot fly to the moon,

but it is much easier to dream about the stars than to go to the moon. 😉

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+marco.bubke=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Edward Welbourne <***@qt.io>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 6:06:08 PM
To: Robert Loehning; André Pönitz
Cc: ***@qt-project.org; qt-***@qt-project.org; Ryein Goddard
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

Am 23.02.2018 um 11:54 schrieb Edward Welbourne:
>> The proposed system provides anonymised and presumably aggregated
>> data; so you won't be given, much less asked to evaluate, information
>> about a specific user A doing things at a specific time B; your
>> objection is a straw man. You'd be getting data on what proportion
>> of users spend what proportions of their time doing which things. In
>> particular, knowing which bugs bite most users most often might not
>> be entirely useless when it comes to prioritising which bug to fix
>> first.

Robert Loehning (23 February 2018 15:59)
> If many users spend much time doing a "thing", does that mean that
> this is most important to them? Or that it is most fun to do? Or does
> it just mean that the design is so bad that they lose lots of time
> there and can't use it efficiently?

You don't necessarily know - but you do at least know it sees a lot of
use, as distinct from the things that no-one uses. That, in turn, might
be because the thing doesn't work, or is too confusing; or it might mean
it does a thing no-one feels any need to do. However, you have now
separated two classes of feature from one another: you won't waste time
asking users why they never use the heavily-used feature; and you won't
assume that users know how to use the feature you know none of them use.

You'll have more information along with just "what proportion use which
features what proportions of the time"; some of this may help you to
distinguish between the various possible explanations. When you look
into the feature that no-one uses much, you may find that most users
that do use it have a crash report following close on the heels of their
use of it; you can make an educated guess at why they don't use it after
that. For another feature, users may methodically work their way
through the steps your tutoral for the feature outlined and never touch
it again; it's probagly useless.

You won't be throwing away your other ways of getting information from
users; you can ask them, in all the usual ways, what they like best and
what ticks them off about each feature. That's quite likely to
distinguish, among the ones that are commonly used, the ones that are
fun from the ones that are time-consuming pain points.

Data on how your users use your product can contribute to your
understanding of what questions to ask your users and what work to
prioritise. Like all data, of course, you have to use it intelligently
to get actionable information out of it; the possibility that you might
misunderstand it doesn't mean it's worthless; it *supplements* the other
sources of insight into how best to use your time, it doesn't replace
them.

All of which, of course, does depend on taking care that the process of
collecting the data does not, in itself, cause greater harm than the
benefits that you can glean from using the information, once collected,

Eddy.
_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
***@qt-project.org
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
Konstantin Tokarev
2018-02-26 11:30:49 UTC
Permalink
23.02.2018, 13:55, "Edward Welbourne" <***@qt.io>:
> André Pönitz (22 February 2018 20:05)
>>  Any number for a "measured" value for rate of crashes or memory leaks
>>  is uninteresting for me when I run into the problem myself reqularly.
>>  And trust me, I do.
>
> I trust you.
> It is, however, possible your usage patterns of the UI are not typical;
> consequently, you'll prioritise the bugs you see most often; which might
> not be the bugs most often encountered by other users. Analytics may
> give you the data to know the pain points everyone else is as acutely
> aware of as you are of the pain points you meet most often.

Having statistics may also be valuable when you need to explain prioritization
to managers.

--
Regards,
Konstantin
Andy
2018-02-22 13:39:55 UTC
Permalink
If non-Qt Company people have a voice, I'm with Simon. More info is needed.

Do you see this shipping as a built-in plugin for Qt Creator?

If so, would this data collection be opt-in?

How is the user informed about exactly what is being collected and how the
data is used?

---
Andy Maloney // https://asmaloney.com
twitter ~ @asmaloney <https://twitter.com/asmaloney>


On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 8:26 AM, Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend
> fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it
> accessible to the community?
>
>
> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>
>
> Simon
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=
> ***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
> *Sent:* Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
> *To:* Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org;
> ***@qt-project.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for
> telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This
> item could be useful also for other applications.
>
>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
> *From: *Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>
> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
> *Date: *Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
> *To: *"qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
> *Subject: *[Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt
> Creator
>
>
>
> Description:
>
>
>
> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
>
> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
>
>
>
> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>
>
>
> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Tino Pyssysalo
>
> Senior Manager
>
>
>
> The Qt Company
>
> HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
>
> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>
> ***@qt.io
>
> +358 40 8615475 <+358%2040%208615475>
>
> http://qt.io
>
>
>
> The future is Written with Qt
>
> ---
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qt-creator mailing list
> Qt-***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
>
>
Robert Löhning
2018-02-22 16:17:00 UTC
Permalink
Hi Andy,

yes, non-Qt Company people have a voice. This discussion here is taking
place in the Qt Project, not just the Qt Company.

Cheers,
Robert


Am 22.02.2018 um 14:39 schrieb Andy:
> If non-Qt Company people have a voice, I'm with Simon. More info is needed.
>
> Do you see this shipping as a built-in plugin for Qt Creator?
>
> If so, would this data collection be opt-in?
>
> How is the user informed about exactly what is being collected and how the
> data is used?
>
> ---
> Andy Maloney // https://asmaloney.com
> twitter ~ @asmaloney <https://twitter.com/asmaloney>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 8:26 AM, Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend
>> fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it
>> accessible to the community?
>>
>>
>> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>>
>>
>> Simon
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=
>> ***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
>> *To:* Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org;
>> ***@qt-project.org
>> *Subject:* Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for
>> telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>>
>> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This
>> item could be useful also for other applications.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>>
>>
>> Tuukka
>>
>>
>>
>> *From: *Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>
>> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
>> *Date: *Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
>> *To: *"qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
>> *Subject: *[Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt
>> Creator
>>
>>
>>
>> Description:
>>
>>
>>
>> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
>>
>> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
>>
>>
>>
>> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>>
>>
>>
>> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Tino Pyssysalo
>>
>> Senior Manager
>>
>>
>>
>> The Qt Company
>>
>> Hämeenkatu 14 C 25
>>
>> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>>
>> ***@qt.io
>>
>> +358 40 8615475 <+358%2040%208615475>
>>
>> http://qt.io
>>
>>
>>
>> The future is Written with Qt
>>
Tuukka Turunen
2018-02-22 13:47:40 UTC
Permalink
Hi Simon,

Is that an item to decide at repo creation time or something to address later during implementation / code review? For example consider requesting a repo for qt/qtcharts – should we have known what data users want to visualize with it before having a repository (or only during the implementation of the feature)?

That said, I do agree that we should discuss about the topic if we are to collect user analytics data – and to also learn what kind of data is valuable to collect (noting that there are strict rules for anything that can be considered personal data). My view is that creating the requested repository and developing the code in the open is very good for transparency and also provides good opportunities for discussion during the implementation.

Yours,

Tuukka

From: Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 15.26
To: Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>, Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>, "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>, "***@qt-project.org" <***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator




Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Andy
2018-02-22 13:54:46 UTC
Permalink
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 8:47 AM, Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
wrote:

>
>
> Hi Simon,
>
>
>
> Is that an item to decide at repo creation time or something to address
> later during implementation / code review? For example consider requesting
> a repo for qt/qtcharts – should we have known what data users want to
> visualize with it before having a repository (or only during the
> implementation of the feature)?
>

I understand where you're coming from, but to me that's a different case.
The whole purpose of this plugin you're describing is to collect data on
user activities. We have to decide if we want to add that capability at all
and it makes sense in this case (to me) to have that discussion before this
is added as a repo.

For me, if this is not an opt-in tool and it doesn't explain exactly what
it's collecting, who gets the data, and how it's used, then I'm absolutely
-1.


>
> That said, I do agree that we should discuss about the topic if we are to
> collect user analytics data – and to also learn what kind of data is
> valuable to collect (noting that there are strict rules for anything that
> can be considered personal data). My view is that creating the requested
> repository and developing the code in the open is very good for
> transparency and also provides good opportunities for discussion during the
> implementation.
>
>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
> *From: *Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>
> *Date: *Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 15.26
> *To: *Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>, Tino Pyssysalo <
> ***@qt.io>, "qt-***@qt-project.org" <
> qt-***@qt-project.org>, "***@qt-project.org" <
> ***@qt-project.org>
>
> *Subject: *Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for
> telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend
> fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it
> accessible to the community?
>
>
>
> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>
>
>
> Simon
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=
> ***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
> *Sent:* Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
> *To:* Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org;
> ***@qt-project.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for
> telemetry plugin in Qt Creator
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This
> item could be useful also for other applications.
>
>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
> *From: *Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>
> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
> *Date: *Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
> *To: *"qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
> *Subject: *[Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt
> Creator
>
>
>
> Description:
>
>
>
> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
>
> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
>
>
>
> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>
>
>
> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Tino Pyssysalo
>
> Senior Manager
>
>
>
> The Qt Company
>
> HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
>
> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>
> ***@qt.io
>
> +358 40 8615475 <+358%2040%208615475>
>
> http://qt.io
>
>
>
> The future is Written with Qt
>
> ---
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qt-creator mailing list
> Qt-***@qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
>
>
---
Andy Maloney // https://asmaloney.com
twitter ~ @asmaloney <https://twitter.com/asmaloney>
Simon Hausmann
2018-02-22 13:58:11 UTC
Permalink
Hi,


For the charts it's indeed not so relevant what kind of charts we can visualize. That is an implementation detail indeed. But whether visualization data in charts is relevant to the users of Qt and whether we would like to make this part of the Qt project is certainly a question we'd clarify up-front before commencing development.


With the given description in this request, it is not evident to me how this fits into the scope of the Qt project, hence my question. I'm not asking about the protocol details, encoding format and memory consumption. I'm wondering about how the requested repository fits into Qt, and that is not clear to me with the provided information. I don't feel that this is an implementation question, it's as fundamental as the name of the repository itself.


Differently put: I'm giving -1 simply because I think more information should be presented to clarify the scope. I'm not saying that this would never ever fit into Qt. We request the same for other modules (say cloudmessaging), so I think it makes sense to do that here, too.


Simon

________________________________
From: Tuukka Turunen
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:47:40 PM
To: Simon Hausmann; Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator




Hi Simon,



Is that an item to decide at repo creation time or something to address later during implementation / code review? For example consider requesting a repo for qt/qtcharts – should we have known what data users want to visualize with it before having a repository (or only during the implementation of the feature)?



That said, I do agree that we should discuss about the topic if we are to collect user analytics data – and to also learn what kind of data is valuable to collect (noting that there are strict rules for anything that can be considered personal data). My view is that creating the requested repository and developing the code in the open is very good for transparency and also provides good opportunities for discussion during the implementation.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 15.26
To: Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>, Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>, "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>, "***@qt-project.org" <***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________

From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator





Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

Hämeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Tino Pyssysalo
2018-02-22 13:58:55 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.

We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.

Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.
--
Tino


On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:


Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator




Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Marco Bubke
2018-02-22 14:36:34 UTC
Permalink
It would be nice if you can explain what data you want to collect and how it will be help the creator development. In my view it is quite hard to collect data about not implemented features, so you could only provide information about what feature is used. So the data could be used to see what should be polished. But could this not lead to false impression because people don't use a 'very useful' features because the implementation is 'suboptimal'. Would in that case not JIRA a much better source of information?

________________________________
From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+marco.bubke=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:58:55 PM
To: Simon Hausmann; Tuukka Turunen; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Qt-creator] [Development] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,



The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.



We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.



Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.

--

Tino





On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:



Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________

From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator





Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

Hämeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Simon Hausmann
2018-02-22 14:45:43 UTC
Permalink
Hi,


Thanks for the update, this is starting to make more sense to me.


So do I understand correctly that you'd like to have one API that you could use from a proprietary Qt Creator plugin (for commercial tooling) as well as from the installer framework, and the repository that you're requesting contains that API, along with the ability to dispatch to a variable backend? Beyond the dispatching, what functionality would you want to place into such a repository?


Can you explain what these two use-cases have in common, beyond a too generic "void collectData(const QString &key, const QVariant &value)" type of functionality? A better understanding of the common patterns and the API helps in finding a good name I think.


Simon

________________________________
From: Tino Pyssysalo
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:58:55 PM
To: Simon Hausmann; Tuukka Turunen; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,



The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.



We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.



Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.

--

Tino





On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:



Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________

From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator





Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

Hämeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
André Pönitz
2018-02-22 20:42:59 UTC
Permalink
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 01:58:55PM +0000, Tino Pyssysalo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for
> analytics.

I see no reason why this can't be done as part of e.g. the commercial Qt
offering, with customers being free to deploy that if they feel it helps
their own offering (for whatever reasons that I luckily do not need to
comprehend), nor do I see a reason why this should be used by the Qt
Project's Qt Creator, especially when the people potentially acting on the
results expressed severe dislike and doubts on the usefulness of such
analytics for their work.

For an Open Source solution there is e.g. KUserFeedback. I haven't used
that myself, but judging from the description it appears to do what you
claim to want to do, and judging from a quick look at the code and the
name of the author I am ready to bet its implementation is sane.

So I really have a hard time to see a gap here that needs to be filled.

> The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide
> that.
>
> We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to
> collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the
> plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously,
> we do not do that for our commercial tooling.
>
> Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user
> in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the
> answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is
> started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of
> collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be
> a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any
> used, and transmitted data to the user. -- Tino

At some point you need to qualify what you mean when you use the word "we".
Your current use of "we" clearly does not include myself, nor, if you allow
me to extrapolate from the grapevine, the majority of the Qt Creator team.

So,
- who is "we"?
- why is "us" (the Qt Creator team) not part of "we"
when the topic is related to Qt Creator?
- what data do you intent to collect exactly?
- what mechanism do you plan to use to translate
the collected data into what actions?


Andre'
Pasi Keränen
2018-02-23 07:05:38 UTC
Permalink
Hi there,

+1 for having a generic telemetry plugin in Qt.

This is great initiative and very much the way today's app and application industry works. UX studies performed by UX experts have been minimized and targeted for specific (usually new/experimental) features or upcoming new software (like we did with Qt 3D Studio back in last spring). And the mass information on "how do our users use the SW? do they find the stuff we've put in there? how often they hit a wall in doing sequence X? how many crashes do they experience when doing Y?" is collected via automated telemetry. It is great as it brings data from the actual user in their actual work and you can then use that to concentrate on functionality that really matters to your users. Making stuff they repeat hundred times a week easier and faster, making them more productive.

I see definite need for this in Qt 3D Studio so please don’t make this just with Qt Creator in mind. Also, in my humble opinion, in order to be relevant in today's UI development, Qt should also offer this kind of a plug-in to our customers. A ready-to-go plug-in that automatically ensures the data is collected in a way that fulfills data privacy acts and respects the privacy of the user would be great. Especially for startups and smaller companies, but also for bigger companies wanting to switch to the modern way of doing UI development. It is not as easy to do as one might think at glance.

I would ask anyone who has not done work with usability and user experience people in the past to give this way of working a chance. I've worked 7 years in application development while we grew usability knowledge in the team over that time. The first time I got to observe a real world user working with our software in actual real world situation was eye opening. We had gotten so many important things wrong in our idealistic thinking and forgotten to handle certain cases that occur on the field. Also you become blind to your own creations faults as you just know how the software works. It's just a fact of life.

Regards,
Pasi Keränen

--
Senior Manager, 3D
The Qt Company





On 22/02/2018, 22.36, "Development on behalf of André Pönitz" <development-bounces+pasi.keranen=***@qt-project.org on behalf of ***@t-online.de> wrote:

On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 01:58:55PM +0000, Tino Pyssysalo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for
> analytics.

I see no reason why this can't be done as part of e.g. the commercial Qt
offering, with customers being free to deploy that if they feel it helps
their own offering (for whatever reasons that I luckily do not need to
comprehend), nor do I see a reason why this should be used by the Qt
Project's Qt Creator, especially when the people potentially acting on the
results expressed severe dislike and doubts on the usefulness of such
analytics for their work.

For an Open Source solution there is e.g. KUserFeedback. I haven't used
that myself, but judging from the description it appears to do what you
claim to want to do, and judging from a quick look at the code and the
name of the author I am ready to bet its implementation is sane.

So I really have a hard time to see a gap here that needs to be filled.

> The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide
> that.
>
> We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to
> collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the
> plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously,
> we do not do that for our commercial tooling.
>
> Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user
> in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the
> answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is
> started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of
> collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be
> a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any
> used, and transmitted data to the user. -- Tino

At some point you need to qualify what you mean when you use the word "we".
Your current use of "we" clearly does not include myself, nor, if you allow
me to extrapolate from the grapevine, the majority of the Qt Creator team.

So,
- who is "we"?
- why is "us" (the Qt Creator team) not part of "we"
when the topic is related to Qt Creator?
- what data do you intent to collect exactly?
- what mechanism do you plan to use to translate
the collected data into what actions?


Andre'

_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
***@qt-project.org
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
Maurice Kalinowski
2018-02-23 07:33:20 UTC
Permalink
“The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics”

If that is the case, then qt-creator/telemetry is the wrong repository to ask for. If you are aiming at something generic, then it should be qt/

Maurice

Von: Qt-creator [mailto:qt-creator-bounces+maurice.kalinowski=***@qt-project.org] Im Auftrag von Tino Pyssysalo
Gesendet: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:59 PM
An: Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>; Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Betreff: Re: [Qt-creator] [Development] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

Hi,

The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.

We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.

Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.
--
Tino


On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:


Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org<mailto:development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>; ***@qt-project.org<mailto:***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator




Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>" <qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Pasi Keränen
2018-02-23 07:53:33 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

Repos can be relocated to new homes if really needed, but I think it’s fair to say more generic location is definitely preferred from Qt 3D Studio point of view.

To make this even easier I’d even start with a playground repo if nothing else can be found. Qt has always been (despite our vocal and sometimes a bit harsh dialogue) inclusive, so it should be fine to go and experiment with all things UI related. Just to see if something is worth the effort or not.

Regards,
Pasi

From: Development <development-bounces+pasi.keranen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Maurice Kalinowski <***@qt.io>
Date: Friday, 23 February 2018 at 9.33
To: Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>, Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>, Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>, "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>, "***@qt-project.org" <***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

“The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics”

If that is the case, then qt-creator/telemetry is the wrong repository to ask for. If you are aiming at something generic, then it should be qt/

Maurice

Von: Qt-creator [mailto:qt-creator-bounces+maurice.kalinowski=***@qt-project.org] Im Auftrag von Tino Pyssysalo
Gesendet: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:59 PM
An: Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>; Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Betreff: Re: [Qt-creator] [Development] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

Hi,

The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.

We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.

Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.
--
Tino


On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:


Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org<mailto:development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>; ***@qt-project.org<mailto:***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator




Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>" <qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Simon Hausmann
2018-02-23 08:00:33 UTC
Permalink
Hi,


Given that no plan has been presented about how this is intended to work in terms of backend or API scope, I stand with my -1 for a qt/ or qt-creator/ repo. If there exists no plan yet but the desire to experiment, then I'm with Pasi here and would suggest a repository in the playground scope. I think either analytics or telemetry make sense to have in the name. Firebase for example uses the term analytics in their API and Mozilla uses the term telemetry for the service of collecting performance and usage info for Firefox.



Simon

________________________________
From: Pasi Keränen
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 8:53:33 AM
To: Maurice Kalinowski; Tino Pyssysalo; Simon Hausmann; Tuukka Turunen; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,



Repos can be relocated to new homes if really needed, but I think it’s fair to say more generic location is definitely preferred from Qt 3D Studio point of view.



To make this even easier I’d even start with a playground repo if nothing else can be found. Qt has always been (despite our vocal and sometimes a bit harsh dialogue) inclusive, so it should be fine to go and experiment with all things UI related. Just to see if something is worth the effort or not.



Regards,

Pasi



From: Development <development-bounces+pasi.keranen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Maurice Kalinowski <***@qt.io>
Date: Friday, 23 February 2018 at 9.33
To: Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>, Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>, Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>, "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>, "***@qt-project.org" <***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



“The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics”



If that is the case, then qt-creator/telemetry is the wrong repository to ask for. If you are aiming at something generic, then it should be qt/



Maurice



Von: Qt-creator [mailto:qt-creator-bounces+maurice.kalinowski=***@qt-project.org] Im Auftrag von Tino Pyssysalo
Gesendet: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:59 PM
An: Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>; Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Betreff: Re: [Qt-creator] [Development] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Hi,



The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.



We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.



Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.

--

Tino





On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:



Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________

From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org<mailto:development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>; ***@qt-project.org<mailto:***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator





Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>" <qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

Hämeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Adam Treat
2018-02-23 12:28:35 UTC
Permalink
+1 to playground

This is open source... by all means experiment! As long as no laws are being broken and no licenses violated, then if their is an itch... scratch it!

The person who codes decides. We can all judge the results by looking at the code. Useless to have stop energy about a plug-in that does not yet exist. It could be great or it could be a lousy failure, but opening up a playgrounds repo costs no one anything.

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+adam.treat=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 3:00:33 AM
To: Pasi Keränen; Tino Pyssysalo; Tuukka Turunen; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,


Given that no plan has been presented about how this is intended to work in terms of backend or API scope, I stand with my -1 for a qt/ or qt-creator/ repo. If there exists no plan yet but the desire to experiment, then I'm with Pasi here and would suggest a repository in the playground scope. I think either analytics or telemetry make sense to have in the name. Firebase for example uses the term analytics in their API and Mozilla uses the term telemetry for the service of collecting performance and usage info for Firefox.



Simon

________________________________
From: Pasi Keränen
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 8:53:33 AM
To: Maurice Kalinowski; Tino Pyssysalo; Simon Hausmann; Tuukka Turunen; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,



Repos can be relocated to new homes if really needed, but I think it’s fair to say more generic location is definitely preferred from Qt 3D Studio point of view.



To make this even easier I’d even start with a playground repo if nothing else can be found. Qt has always been (despite our vocal and sometimes a bit harsh dialogue) inclusive, so it should be fine to go and experiment with all things UI related. Just to see if something is worth the effort or not.



Regards,

Pasi



From: Development <development-bounces+pasi.keranen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Maurice Kalinowski <***@qt.io>
Date: Friday, 23 February 2018 at 9.33
To: Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>, Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>, Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>, "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>, "***@qt-project.org" <***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



“The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics”



If that is the case, then qt-creator/telemetry is the wrong repository to ask for. If you are aiming at something generic, then it should be qt/



Maurice



Von: Qt-creator [mailto:qt-creator-bounces+maurice.kalinowski=***@qt-project.org] Im Auftrag von Tino Pyssysalo
Gesendet: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:59 PM
An: Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>; Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Betreff: Re: [Qt-creator] [Development] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Hi,



The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.



We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.



Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.

--

Tino





On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:



Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________

From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org<mailto:development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>; ***@qt-project.org<mailto:***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator





Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>" <qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

Hämeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Tino Pyssysalo
2018-02-23 15:58:02 UTC
Permalink
I’ll clarify little bit, as my earlier comment about “any backend” has been confusing. I requested a repo for a QtCreator analytics plugin, but we realized why not to use a similar solution in other tools as well. I want to concentrate on a Qt Creator plugin first to fully understand the problem domain. Once that is done we can discuss how to move forward with this project”. Our intention is usage data collection, but nothing else at this point. Obviously, we plan to use the collected data to improve Qt. As a concrete example, we have provided a lot of nice features in Qt Quick Designer in the recent Qt Creator releases, but we have no idea, if the use of Qt Quick Designer has changed in any way. This kind of data would be very valuable to us.
--
Tino



On 23/02/2018, 14.28, "Adam Treat" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:

+1 to playground

This is open source... by all means experiment! As long as no laws are being broken and no licenses violated, then if their is an itch... scratch it!

The person who codes decides. We can all judge the results by looking at the code. Useless to have stop energy about a plug-in that does not yet exist. It could be great or it could be a lousy failure, but opening up a playgrounds repo costs no one anything.

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+adam.treat=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 3:00:33 AM
To: Pasi KerÀnen; Tino Pyssysalo; Tuukka Turunen; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,



Given that no plan has been presented about how this is intended to work in terms of backend or API scope, I stand with my -1 for a qt/ or qt-creator/ repo. If there exists no plan yet but the desire to experiment, then I'm with Pasi here and would suggest a repository in the playground scope. I think either analytics or telemetry make sense to have in the name. Firebase for example uses the term analytics in their API and Mozilla uses the term telemetry for the service of collecting performance and usage info for Firefox.





Simon

________________________________
From: Pasi KerÀnen
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 8:53:33 AM
To: Maurice Kalinowski; Tino Pyssysalo; Simon Hausmann; Tuukka Turunen; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator


Hi,



Repos can be relocated to new homes if really needed, but I think it’s fair to say more generic location is definitely preferred from Qt 3D Studio point of view.



To make this even easier I’d even start with a playground repo if nothing else can be found. Qt has always been (despite our vocal and sometimes a bit harsh dialogue) inclusive, so it should be fine to go and experiment with all things UI related. Just to see if something is worth the effort or not.



Regards,

Pasi



From: Development <development-bounces+pasi.keranen=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Maurice Kalinowski <***@qt.io>
Date: Friday, 23 February 2018 at 9.33
To: Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>, Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>, Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>, "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>, "***@qt-project.org" <***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



“The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics”



If that is the case, then qt-creator/telemetry is the wrong repository to ask for. If you are aiming at something generic, then it should be qt/



Maurice



Von: Qt-creator [mailto:qt-creator-bounces+maurice.kalinowski=***@qt-project.org] Im Auftrag von Tino Pyssysalo
Gesendet: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:59 PM
An: Simon Hausmann <***@qt.io>; Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
Betreff: Re: [Qt-creator] [Development] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Hi,



The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not provide that.



We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator, the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community. Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.



Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed. When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog, consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data, conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.

--

Tino





On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann" <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:



Hi,



Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it accessible to the community?



(-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)



Simon

________________________________

From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org<mailto:development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>; ***@qt-project.org<mailto:***@qt-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator





Hi,



+1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item could be useful also for other applications.



Yours,



Tuukka



From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>> on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>>
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2018 at 13.04
To: "qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>" <qt-***@qt-project.org<mailto:qt-***@qt-project.org>>
Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator



Description:



Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.



Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo



Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry





---

Tino Pyssysalo

Senior Manager



The Qt Company

HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25

33100 Tampere, Finland

***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>

+358 40 8615475

http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>



The future is Written with Qt

---
Tobias Hunger
2018-02-26 09:18:56 UTC
Permalink
Hi Tino,

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 4:58 PM, Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io> wrote:
> I’ll clarify little bit, as my earlier comment about “any backend” has been
> confusing. I requested a repo for a QtCreator analytics plugin, but we
> realized why not to use a similar solution in other tools as well. I want to
> concentrate on a Qt Creator plugin first to fully understand the problem
> domain. Once that is done we can discuss how to move forward with this
> project”. Our intention is usage data collection, but nothing else at this
> point. Obviously, we plan to use the collected data to improve Qt. As a
> concrete example, we have provided a lot of nice features in Qt Quick
> Designer in the recent Qt Creator releases, but we have no idea, if the use
> of Qt Quick Designer has changed in any way. This kind of data would be very
> valuable to us.

So this is a simple creator plugin to collect data about Qt Creator
users. That makes the scope clear to me, so I can step retract my -1
for undefined scope.

A repository in the qt-creator namespace makes sense to me for that
scope, but considering the experimental nature of this work, a
playground project might work out better. I am not deep enough in the
usual practices to have a firm opinion on that topic.

Best Regards,
Tobias
Volker Krause
2018-02-23 09:20:23 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

as numerous people have asked me to comment on this by now, let me just do
that here publicly (representing KDE's KUserFeedback, not KDAB):

Tino is well aware of KUserFeedback, we discussed that last year already in
detail. So it definitely was considered as a possible solution for this.
I do not know why it was ultimately decided to implement a new framework, in
particular if that's due to conceptual or technical reasons, or licensing.


With the KDAB hat back on, we do use KUserFeedback in GammaRay since mid last
year, and it has so far provided a few useful insights, in particular
regarding to what extend we still need to support ancient Qt versions. But as
with any data, it's not the ultimate answer to all questions, and you need to
be very careful how to interpret it obviously. We have so far not received any
negative feedback with e.g. privacy concerns, but the approach KUserFeedback
takes there by default (and that we followed in GammaRay) is intentionally
very restrained.

Regards,
Volker

On Thursday, 22 February 2018 14:58:55 CET Tino Pyssysalo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for
> analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not
> provide that.

> We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers
> to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator,
> the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community.
> Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.

> Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask
> user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX
> improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed.
> When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog,
> consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable
> the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data,
> conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.
--
> Tino
>
>
> On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann"
> <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits
> into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it
> accessible to the community?

>
>
> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>
>
>
> Simon
>
> ________________________________
> From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>
> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday,
> February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
> To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry
> plugin in Qt Creator

>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item
> could be useful also for other applications.

>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
> From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on
> behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22
> February 2018 at 13.04
> To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
> Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt
> Creator

>
>
> Description:
>
>
>
> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help
> improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode,
> will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.

>
>
> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>
>
>
> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Tino Pyssysalo
>
> Senior Manager
>
>
>
> The Qt Company
>
> HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
>
> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>
> ***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>
>
> +358 40 8615475
>
> http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>
>
>
>
> The future is Written with Qt
>
Tuukka Turunen
2018-02-23 10:26:51 UTC
Permalink
Hi,

Use of KUserFeedback is problematic due to its license. Adding 3rd party L/GPL components is something I do not want to do (already wrote "we", but let's use "I" instead to avoid need to define what is meant by we :) The reason for avoiding adding any 3rd party components with viral licenses is coming from the commercial licensee needs.

If KUserFeedback does what is needed from the discussed Qt add-on module, and the persons who wrote it are interested in contributing it to Qt, that could be one approach.

That said, I have not looked into KUserFeedback myself beyond licensing.

Yours,

Tuukka

On 23/02/2018, 11.22, "Development on behalf of Volker Krause" <development-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org on behalf of ***@kdab.com> wrote:

Hi,

as numerous people have asked me to comment on this by now, let me just do
that here publicly (representing KDE's KUserFeedback, not KDAB):

Tino is well aware of KUserFeedback, we discussed that last year already in
detail. So it definitely was considered as a possible solution for this.
I do not know why it was ultimately decided to implement a new framework, in
particular if that's due to conceptual or technical reasons, or licensing.


With the KDAB hat back on, we do use KUserFeedback in GammaRay since mid last
year, and it has so far provided a few useful insights, in particular
regarding to what extend we still need to support ancient Qt versions. But as
with any data, it's not the ultimate answer to all questions, and you need to
be very careful how to interpret it obviously. We have so far not received any
negative feedback with e.g. privacy concerns, but the approach KUserFeedback
takes there by default (and that we followed in GammaRay) is intentionally
very restrained.

Regards,
Volker

On Thursday, 22 February 2018 14:58:55 CET Tino Pyssysalo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for
> analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not
> provide that.

> We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers
> to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator,
> the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community.
> Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.

> Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask
> user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX
> improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed.
> When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog,
> consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable
> the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data,
> conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.
--
> Tino
>
>
> On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann"
> <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits
> into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it
> accessible to the community?

>
>
> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>
>
>
> Simon
>
> ________________________________
> From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>
> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday,
> February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
> To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry
> plugin in Qt Creator

>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item
> could be useful also for other applications.

>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
> From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on
> behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22
> February 2018 at 13.04
> To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
> Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt
> Creator

>
>
> Description:
>
>
>
> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help
> improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode,
> will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.

>
>
> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>
>
>
> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Tino Pyssysalo
>
> Senior Manager
>
>
>
> The Qt Company
>
> Hämeenkatu 14 C 25
>
> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>
> ***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>
>
> +358 40 8615475
>
> http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>
>
>
>
> The future is Written with Qt
>
Simon Hausmann
2018-02-23 10:45:01 UTC
Permalink
I just had a look at KUserFeedback and I'm impressed.


Looks like a really good combination of very useful providers, UI, administration and server bits - all in one relatively small package. And for those not liking the PHP server part, it appears that that would be a piece that is relatively easy to replace - although the code looks very clean.


Also very cool that you're using this in production for GammaRay.


/That/ is something that would be awesome as part of the Qt project IMHO. Sensible scope, production tested and easy to use. (But I can totally understand that it might make more sense to remain in the KDE frameworks)



Simon

________________________________
From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org> on behalf of Volker Krause <***@kdab.com>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 10:20:23 AM
To: ***@qt-project.org; qt-***@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt Creator

Hi,

as numerous people have asked me to comment on this by now, let me just do
that here publicly (representing KDE's KUserFeedback, not KDAB):

Tino is well aware of KUserFeedback, we discussed that last year already in
detail. So it definitely was considered as a possible solution for this.
I do not know why it was ultimately decided to implement a new framework, in
particular if that's due to conceptual or technical reasons, or licensing.


With the KDAB hat back on, we do use KUserFeedback in GammaRay since mid last
year, and it has so far provided a few useful insights, in particular
regarding to what extend we still need to support ancient Qt versions. But as
with any data, it's not the ultimate answer to all questions, and you need to
be very careful how to interpret it obviously. We have so far not received any
negative feedback with e.g. privacy concerns, but the approach KUserFeedback
takes there by default (and that we followed in GammaRay) is intentionally
very restrained.

Regards,
Volker

On Thursday, 22 February 2018 14:58:55 CET Tino Pyssysalo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use for
> analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not
> provide that.

> We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers
> to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator,
> the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community.
> Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.

> Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask
> user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX
> improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never installed.
> When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog,
> consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable
> the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data,
> conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.
--
> Tino
>
>
> On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann"
> <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend fits
> into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is it
> accessible to the community?

>
>
> (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
>
>
>
> Simon
>
> ________________________________
> From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>
> on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
Sent: Thursday,
> February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
> To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry
> plugin in Qt Creator

>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This item
> could be useful also for other applications.

>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
> From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org> on
> behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
Date: Thursday, 22
> February 2018 at 13.04
> To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
> Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt
> Creator

>
>
> Description:
>
>
>
> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help
> improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.

> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode,
> will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.

>
>
> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>
>
>
> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Tino Pyssysalo
>
> Senior Manager
>
>
>
> The Qt Company
>
> Hämeenkatu 14 C 25
>
> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>
> ***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>
>
> +358 40 8615475
>
> http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>
>
>
>
> The future is Written with Qt
>
Volker Krause
2018-02-23 10:57:59 UTC
Permalink
On Friday, 23 February 2018 11:45:01 CET Simon Hausmann wrote:
> I just had a look at KUserFeedback and I'm impressed.
>
> Looks like a really good combination of very useful providers, UI,
> administration and server bits - all in one relatively small package. And
> for those not liking the PHP server part, it appears that that would be a
> piece that is relatively easy to replace - although the code looks very
> clean.

I don't like the PHP part either, it was just the easiest technology to deploy
on the available servers at the time. The interface is very simple JSON/REST
though, so it's indeed easy to explore alternatives.

> Also very cool that you're using this in production for GammaRay.
>
> /That/ is something that would be awesome as part of the Qt project IMHO.
> Sensible scope, production tested and easy to use. (But I can totally
> understand that it might make more sense to remain in the KDE frameworks)

Contribution of the entire KUserFeedback framework under the Qt CLA seems
unlikely, but as indicated during previous discussions, a conversation about
finding a more acceptable FOSS license to address the commercial user concerns
is certainly possible.

Regards,
Volker


> ________________________________
> From: Development <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>
> on behalf of Volker Krause <***@kdab.com> Sent: Friday, February
> 23, 2018 10:20:23 AM
> To: ***@qt-project.org; qt-***@qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry
> plugin in Qt Creator
>
> Hi,
>
> as numerous people have asked me to comment on this by now, let me just do
> that here publicly (representing KDE's KUserFeedback, not KDAB):
>
> Tino is well aware of KUserFeedback, we discussed that last year already in
> detail. So it definitely was considered as a possible solution for this.
> I do not know why it was ultimately decided to implement a new framework, in
> particular if that's due to conceptual or technical reasons, or licensing.
>
>
> With the KDAB hat back on, we do use KUserFeedback in GammaRay since mid
> last year, and it has so far provided a few useful insights, in particular
> regarding to what extend we still need to support ancient Qt versions. But
> as with any data, it's not the ultimate answer to all questions, and you
> need to be very careful how to interpret it obviously. We have so far not
> received any negative feedback with e.g. privacy concerns, but the approach
> KUserFeedback takes there by default (and that we followed in GammaRay) is
> intentionally very restrained.
>
> Regards,
> Volker
>
> On Thursday, 22 February 2018 14:58:55 CET Tino Pyssysalo wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > The idea is to develop a generic library/plugin, which anyone could use
> > for
> > analytics. The backend can be any storage and The Qt Company does not
> > provide that.
> >
> > We plan to use the same backend, which we already use in online installers
> > to collect statistics about installations. At least in case of Qt Creator,
> > the plan is to make some analysis results available for the community.
> > Obviously, we do not do that for our commercial tooling.
> >
> > Analytics is opt-in and disabled by default in Qt Creator. We plan to ask
> > user in the installer, if the user wish to participate in Qt UX
> > improvement. If the answers is no, the analytics plugin is never
> > installed.
> >
> > When the creator is started for the first time, it will show a dialog,
> >
> > consisting a list of collected data items and an option to enable/disable
> > the plugin. There will be a new output pane, which shows collected data,
> > conversions methods, if any used, and transmitted data to the user.
>
> --
>
> > Tino
> >
> >
> > On 22/02/2018, 15.26, "Simon Hausmann"
> > <***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> >
> > Can you provide a bit more information about how this plugin / frontend
> > fits into the Qt project? Where is the collected data sent to and how is
> > it accessible to the community?
> >
> >
> >
> > (-1 from me, as I think this needs to be clarified)
> >
> >
> >
> > Simon
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: Development
> > <development-bounces+simon.hausmann=***@qt-project.org>
> > on behalf of Tuukka Turunen <***@qt.io>
>
> Sent: Thursday,
>
> > February 22, 2018 2:14:14 PM
> > To: Tino Pyssysalo; qt-***@qt-project.org; ***@qt-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [Development] [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for
> > telemetry
> > plugin in Qt Creator
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> >
> > +1 for creating the repo, but what about qt/qtanalytics as a name? This
> > item could be useful also for other applications.
> >
> >
> >
> > Yours,
> >
> > Tuukka
> >
> > From: Qt-creator <qt-creator-bounces+tuukka.turunen=***@qt-project.org>
> > on behalf of Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io>
>
> Date: Thursday, 22
>
> > February 2018 at 13.04
> > To: "qt-***@qt-project.org" <qt-***@qt-project.org>
> > Subject: [Qt-creator] Requesting repository for telemetry plugin in Qt
> > Creator
> >
> >
> >
> > Description:
> >
> >
> >
> > Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help
> > improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
> >
> > Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode,
> > will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
> >
> >
> >
> > Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
> >
> >
> >
> > Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> >
> > Tino Pyssysalo
> >
> > Senior Manager
> >
> >
> >
> > The Qt Company
> >
> > HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
> >
> > 33100 Tampere, Finland
> >
> > ***@qt.io<mailto:***@qt.io>
> >
> > +358 40 8615475
> >
> > http://qt.io<http://qt.io/>
> >
> >
> >
> > The future is Written with Qt

Volker Krause | ***@kdab.com | Director Automotive
KDAB (Deutschland) GmbH&Co KG, a KDAB Group company
Tel. +49-30-521325470
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts
Tobias Hunger
2018-02-23 08:08:40 UTC
Permalink
Hi Pasi,

On Feb 23, 2018 08:05, "Pasi KerÀnen" <***@qt.io> wrote:

Hi there,

+1 for having a generic telemetry plugin in Qt.


I planned to stay out of this, but

-1 since I am totally confused about the scope of this project at this
point.

So are we talking about a generic telemetry framework for Qt applications
or about watching Qt Creator users specifically?

Tino started by making the claim that this is a generic library and then
kept listing Qt Creator specific integrations. You focus entirely onto the
generic part, leaving out creator completely.

What exactly are we talking about here?

A Qt creator spyware plug-in (which does more than what we discuss here I
hope:-) would be a matter of a couple of weeks to do, putting a generic
framework into place with all the bits and pieces for that to be actually
useful in a wide list of possible contexts is a very different beast.

This is great initiative and very much the way today's app and application
industry works. UX studies performed by UX experts have been minimized and
targeted for specific (usually new/experimental) features or upcoming new
software (like we did with Qt 3D Studio back in last spring). And the mass
information on "how do our users use the SW? do they find the stuff we've
put in there? how often they hit a wall in doing sequence X? how many
crashes do they experience when doing Y?" is collected via automated
telemetry. It is great as it brings data from the actual user in their
actual work and you can then use that to concentrate on functionality that
really matters to your users. Making stuff they repeat hundred times a week
easier and faster, making them more productive.


I see value in this approach when you can do lots of small releases fast.
So you can do evaluate the effect of small changes by doing one change to
evaluate per release and measure how that effects usage.

We can not do more than two releases per year in Qt. Is this approach even
applicable to us?

I want to also point out that answering any of the questions you used as an
example require *way* more information than I am even remotely comfortable
to collect.

I see definite need for this in Qt 3D Studio so please don’t make this just
with Qt Creator in mind. Also, in my humble opinion, in order to be
relevant in today's UI development, Qt should also offer this kind of a
plug-in to our customers. A ready-to-go plug-in that automatically ensures
the data is collected in a way that fulfills data privacy acts and respects
the privacy of the user would be great. Especially for startups and smaller
companies, but also for bigger companies wanting to switch to the modern
way of doing UI development. It is not as easy to do as one might think at
glance.


I agree that having a general framework has value to some customers.

Such a framework would need to be integrated into big solutions like Google
analytics or something similar so the users can actually evaluate the
collected data and cross-reference that to other data they collect. Just
dumping data into some server somewhere does not help anybody.

Will the server-side code be part of this project by the way?

What about evaluation of the collected data? Is that in scope for this
project, too?

I would ask anyone who has not done work with usability and user experience
people in the past to give this way of working a chance. I've worked 7
years in application development while we grew usability knowledge in the
team over that time. The first time I got to observe a real world user
working with our software in actual real world situation was eye opening.
We had gotten so many important things wrong in our idealistic thinking and
forgotten to handle certain cases that occur on the field. Also you become
blind to your own creations faults as you just know how the software works.
It's just a fact of life.


Sure. We do way too little validation of what we do against the real world
usage.

Let us do some usability studies, let us talk to users, let us do surveys,
let's evaluate all the data users provide to us on the mailing list, the
bug tracker, the forums, stack overflow and in lots of other places. We do
have a very active and supportive community of users and customers, let us
use the feedback they provide already!

Collecting some semi-random data from a self-selected group of users and
dumping that onto a server somewhere is next to useless compared to all the
other options we have already. Even in an ideal situation (which we do not
have within Qt!), metrics are not comparable to a real user study where you
actually watch users doing their thing.

This is even more true when not leaving out any information that can be
used to identify individual users from the collected data, which we
obviously will do.

Best Regards,
Tobias
Pasi Keränen
2018-02-23 09:33:03 UTC
Permalink
Hi Tobias,

I planned to stay out of this, but
-1 since I am totally confused about the scope of this project at this point.
So are we talking about a generic telemetry framework for Qt applications or about watching Qt Creator users specifically?
Tino started by making the claim that this is a generic library and then kept listing Qt Creator specific integrations. You focus entirely onto the generic part, leaving out creator completely.
What exactly are we talking about here?

My understanding at this point is that this is meant to be a telemetry framework for Qt applications and first integration point that has been in discussions is Qt Creator. I intentionally left Qt Creator out as I don’t feel comfortable talking what they need/don’t need. So instead I concentrated on what I see Qt 3D Studio needs as I feel much more comfortable to talk about that based on our experiences, our engagements with customers and the usability and UI work we’ve done so far in Qt 3D Studio project.

I’m always in favor of iterative development as you very very rarely understand the scope and needs at the beginning. So I understand the need to have a “reference integration to try out” even if we talk about aiming towards generic telemetry plugin. And it seems quite obvious from these discussions that we don’t yet know ourselves a lot about how to collect data, what type of data is to be collected and how to process it. We seem to be a bit divided in to individuals thinking this is inherently bad and morally dubious. And individuals (like myself) who see this as great idea to be able to get more data on how people use our tools. Not just from big customers and people who come to our events. But also from people out there in universities, small companies, startups, the people we rarely meet in person.

Once we have understanding on what exactly are we after, then it would be good to move towards a generic Qt framework prototype. Maybe integrate against a known and trusted third party framework, add features to the API iteratively based on learnings and iterations. Then move on to publish this as tech preview and while we investigate integrating against another 3rd party framework so that we end up with a truly generic, Qt-like wrapper for specific functionality.

A Qt creator spyware plug-in (which does more than what we discuss here I hope:-) would be a matter of a couple of weeks to do, putting a generic framework into place with all the bits and pieces for that to be actually useful in a wide list of possible contexts is a very different beast.

I object to using “Spyware” term in this context. Spyware is SW that does things behind your back. Siphons contact information, user account info etc. without telling you. We’re NOT talking about such use cases here! I don’t think anyone in The Qt Company wants to do such things. From what I hear the intention is to track certain things in an open, transparent manner, respecting the communitys clear wish to keep things in the open and for the benefit of our end users.


This is great initiative and very much the way today's app and application industry works. UX studies performed by UX experts have been minimized and targeted for specific (usually new/experimental) features or upcoming new software (like we did with Qt 3D Studio back in last spring). And the mass information on "how do our users use the SW? do they find the stuff we've put in there? how often they hit a wall in doing sequence X? how many crashes do they experience when doing Y?" is collected via automated telemetry. It is great as it brings data from the actual user in their actual work and you can then use that to concentrate on functionality that really matters to your users. Making stuff they repeat hundred times a week easier and faster, making them more productive.

I see value in this approach when you can do lots of small releases fast. So you can do evaluate the effect of small changes by doing one change to evaluate per release and measure how that effects usage.
We can not do more than two releases per year in Qt. Is this approach even applicable to us?

Qt 3D Studio plans to do 4 releases per year, so for us this is definitely applicable. Qt Creator does also more than 2 releases a year so perhaps this could be useful for them as well, but as I said. I’m not comfortable talking on their behalf on this.

I want to also point out that answering any of the questions you used as an example require *way* more information than I am even remotely comfortable to collect.


This is where we definitely differ as individuals. I use software from Apple, Adobe etc. and I’m 100% fine giving them information on my usage statistics as it means the SW might get better over time for me. If e.g. Blender would some day ask me “are you ok for us to track your usage of the SW” I’d be 100% ok to do that as I see that it definitely could improve a lot from observing users. I see the poitive side of this type of usability and user data collection. So taking this in to account, perhaps our solution should somehow enforce possibility to opt-in/opt-out to accommodate for both you and me?

I agree that having a general framework has value to some customers.

Good to hear we’re in agreement on some level at least! :)

Such a framework would need to be integrated into big solutions like Google analytics or something similar so the users can actually evaluate the collected data and cross-reference that to other data they collect. Just dumping data into some server somewhere does not help anybody.
Will the server-side code be part of this project by the way?
What about evaluation of the collected data? Is that in scope for this project, too?

All these are good questions that I’d rather not try to answer in a meeting/email thread/chat thread, but rather prototype hands on iteratively. Just may way of approaching stuff and having experienced so many frustrating analysis paralysis moments and moments where theoretical discussions have proven something “absolutely impossible” only for competition then coming out with that exact feature a few moments later. Just try to do it and see how it goes, collect experience and modify your target setting based on that. Listen to customers, community and you shouldn’t go horribly wrong.

Let us do some usability studies, let us talk to users, let us do surveys, let's evaluate all the data users provide to us on the mailing list, the bug tracker, the forums, stack overflow and in lots of other places. We do have a very active and supportive community of users and customers, let us use the feedback they provide already!

Yup, we’ve done usability studies with Qt 3D Studio, we’ve done talking with SOME key customers and yes we’ve even fixed a lot of issues they’ve pointed out in Qt 3D Studio. I’m watching our bug tracker all the time, it’s part of the daily work. But let’s be honest.. we CAN’T talk to every user out there, only the biggest ones, only the ones that happen to participate our events. Qt 3D Studio is not talking to probably 95-97% of our users at the moment as we just can’t. Even this mailing list doesn’t cover all of our users. And crawling through all these email threads, no thanks, that is very very inefficient use of time in my opinion. This forum is great for discussing ideas, formulating, pointing out what needs to be considered (like in this case, it’s loud and clear that privacy and opt-in are of great importance to our community for atelemetry feature). Data collection would (when implemented correctly) automate the input collection and bring in data from all over the user base, that is why I see great value in it.

Collecting some semi-random data from a self-selected group of users and dumping that onto a server somewhere is next to useless compared to all the other options we have already. Even in an ideal situation (which we do not have within Qt!), metrics are not comparable to a real user study where you actually watch users doing their thing.

Perhaps first version will start with a set of data that might turn out to be ”semi random” and “not so useful for understanding users”. But I believe in learning, iterating and improvement. Next iteration we should improve and collect less random set of data that also then helps us in understanding our users better. And so on and so on.

Yes I agree, metrics are ADDITIONAL tool. Not replacement for anything. Visiting users and talking with them does sometime open a whole new point of view in to what you are doing. Those can provide revolutionary ideas for you. That isn’t replaced with metrics. But metrics are great for iterative development, as you point out above. Honing and fine tuning the set of functionality you already have in your application.

Regards,
Pasi
Tobias Hunger
2018-02-23 10:22:02 UTC
Permalink
Hi Pasi,

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 10:33 AM, Pasi Keränen <***@qt.io> wrote:
<snip>
> I object to using “Spyware” term in this context. Spyware is SW that does
> things behind your back.

I noticed that my mail could be read in the way you read it pretty
much right after sending it. I need to apologize for expressing myself
so poorly!

What I meant to say that it is possible to write a spyware plugin
(following pretty much exactly what you lay out below) for creator or
any one Qt application that will collect basically everything about a
user and to feed that into a database on the internet somewhere in a
couple of weeks. On the other hand the task of writing a framework
that does anonymized data collection that follows all the relevant
data protection laws and standards and that pushes it to a server that
is easy to manage and set up is an entirely different scope. I wanted
to find out where our discussion is between these two poles.

I did not intend to imply that what we are discussing here is spyware.

> Siphons contact information, user account info etc.
> without telling you. We’re NOT talking about such use cases here! I don’t
> think anyone in The Qt Company wants to do such things. From what I hear the
> intention is to track certain things in an open, transparent manner,
> respecting the communitys clear wish to keep things in the open and for the
> benefit of our end users.

I am sorry for giving the impression that I thought anybody here is
considering spyware. That was not my intention and I want to apologize
to anybody that got that impression.

<snip>

Best Regards,
Tobias
Davide Coppola
2018-03-01 09:45:18 UTC
Permalink
Personally I believe there's nothing wrong in collecting anonymous user
stats as long it's clear what's collected and there's some option that
allows to opt-out at any time.

Considering the open nature of Qt Creator an extra requirement is probably
making such stats publicly available, even just as aggregated results.

My 2c


On 22 February 2018 at 12:04, Tino Pyssysalo <***@qt.io> wrote:

> Description:
>
>
>
> Telemetry plugin (frontend) to collect usage data from Qt Creator to help improving Qt, Qt features, and Qt tools.
>
> Non-personal data items, such as duration the user spent in design mode, will be collected in a way, which is completely transparent to the user.
>
>
>
> Responsible: Tino Pyssysalo
>
>
>
> Repository: qt-creator/plugin-telemetry
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Tino Pyssysalo
>
> Senior Manager
>
>
>
> The Qt Company
>
> HÀmeenkatu 14 C 25
>
> 33100 Tampere, Finland
>
> ***@qt.io
>
> +358 40 8615475 <+358%2040%208615475>
>
> http://qt.io
>
>
>
> The future is Written with Qt
>
> ---
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>


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*Davide Coppola*

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