[plt-scheme] Version Check

From: Erich Rast (erich at snafu.de)
Date: Thu Apr 27 03:14:58 EDT 2006

>
> We are considering turning this on by default, but there are ethical
> and technical issues -- so I'm polling for opinions.
>

My personal opinion: Transmitting user data by default without asking 
the user for permission first is a bad thing. Downloading version data 
by default. but without sending user data to the server, sounds okay to 
me. Even with permission of the user, transmitting user data in 
compressed/encrypted or otherwise non-human-readable form is in my 
opinion immoral and should generally be prohibited by law. I see no 
problems with transmitting user data in human-readable form with user 
permission and first showing the user what is going to be sent.

So I agree with others that automatically downloading the latest 
version number is fine as default, but sending usage statistics, 
installed versions and libraries, operating system details, and 
anything alike is not good.

I'm speaking generally, of course, since I absolutely don't believe 
that the PLT team has any evil, sinister intentions---unlike Microsoft 
or Google.

Best regards,

Erich



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