Google's OpenTelemetry Reaches Beta For Open-Source Telemetry Purposes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Google's OpenTelemetry Reaches Beta For Open-Source Telemetry Purposes

Nearly one year after announcing OpenTelemetry as the merger of the OpenCensus and OpenTracing projects, Google has announced today OpenTelemetry has advanced to its beta phase...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenTelemetry-Beta

[Guest]

Telemetry must be banned.

[board]

I have a vague memory of when spyware used to be controversial, and even illegal.

[ssokolow]

I have a vague memory of when spyware used to be controversial, and even illegal.

How is this any different from what we used to do in the pre-AJAX era using Apache logs and tools like AWStats?

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised they're doing this, since it allows you self-host your telemetry collection rather than using Google Analytics.

[polarathene]

Telemetry must be banned.

opt-in is ok if you want to support a project by providing anonymous data. Especially if it's an open-source project, you can confirm what sort of telemetry data it's requesting and that it is anonymized.

[portablenuke]

How is this any different from what we used to do in the pre-AJAX era using Apache logs and tools like AWStats?

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised they're doing this, since it allows you self-host your telemetry collection rather than using Google Analytics.

OpenTelemetry is for application performance monitoring (APM), and it allows applications to be instrumented to allow in production profiling and tracing. Think Dynatrace instead of Google Analytics, and statsd instead of Apache logs.

The OS level equivalents are systemtap or dtrace.

[ssokolow]

OpenTelemetry is for application performance monitoring (APM), and it allows applications to be instrumented to allow in production profiling and tracing. Think Dynatrace instead of Google Analytics, and statsd instead of Apache logs.

The OS level equivalents are systemtap or dtrace.

I actually intended that as a rhetorical question based on how many web applications I've seen which build homegrown instrumentation around the Google Analytics APIs as opposed to using something self-hosted like OpenTelemetry enables. (I've even seen non-web applications run up against my HOSTS file's claim that GA is at 127.0.0.1.)

That said, telemetry is definitely overdone and without proper respect for the user. While I'm not sure I'd go as far as anonymizing IP addresses as in Martin Fowler's example, I definitely agree with Datensparsamkeit in principle.

(He gives an example of either stripping the last octet for analytics or hashing the IP for an anti-abuse key that's more pseudonymous but, if you're doing both in the same database, and you can craft a SELECT which associates them, then it feels like it'd be extra work with no net privacy gain.)

When I have time to get back to my game launcher project, I plan to use something like Firejail or Bubblewrap to default to making network access opt-in (and something I won't grant for single-player games) to ensure that I don't get used to anything which will break if installed from a DVD+R backup after the company has gone belly-up.

It's bad enough that, for want of that, my Linux copy of Super Crate Box now displays an annoying "This version of the game no longer available, sorry. ):#Please check http://www.supercratebox.com for more information." popup every time I start it, even when run with the network sandboxed away.

(I hope I can dig up the original install bundle that didn't cache the annoying message.)

[Guest]

opt-in is ok if you want to support a project by providing anonymous data. Especially if it's an open-source project, you can confirm what sort of telemetry data it's requesting and that it is anonymized.

An user already shares a lot data unconsciously: IP, cockies, other preferences, during navigation. And big companies share these data among them. Spying is everywhere.

[Danny3]

opt-in is ok if you want to support a project by providing anonymous data. Especially if it's an open-source project, you can confirm what sort of telemetry data it's requesting and that it is anonymized.

Opt-in is not exactly ok how it is now
Having the a feature that can collect data and send it directly built-in in some software or OS is dangerous because it could simply be turned on by a simple software update.
Imagine if Github had an OS with this kind of spyware built-in when Microsoft bought it.
I bet the first updates that would've came for it it would've been tu automatically turn on the spyware and send as much info as possible.
In my opinon spyware / telemetry should always be a separate module / plugin that can be download and installed by the user if he wants to contribute, but not always there installed.
I think this way is a way lesser chance of being spied without knowing.

[polarathene]

Having the a feature that can collect data and send it directly built-in in some software or OS is dangerous because it could simply be turned on by a simple software update.

Uhhh... as oppossed to what.. a "feature" update that adds telemetry without any opt-in/out from the user? Same thing. If you remove the opt-in part and disrespect the users wishes, then you're no longer providing opt-in.