[Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki version statistics

[Henry Hartley]

On 7/30/2010 10:24 AM, Steve VanSlyck wrote:
>
> From: nevio carlos de alarcão<nevinhoalarcao at gmail.com>
>> Hi, could you explain what does this dial home feature mean? It
>> would be more comprehensive toward those who are not software
>> expert but do want to contribute. Thank you. Regards, Nevio
>
> "Dial home" or "phone home" is a euphimism from the movie ET. It
> refers to software that "checks in" periodically with the software
> devolper. Many people consider phone home implementations not to be
> features so much as spyware.

When software phones home to give the folks at home information about 
the computer doing the phoning, that's spyware. We're talking about 
software that phones home and asks if there's anything new that it might 
want. Or at least that's what it sounds like to me. Two totally 
different things. No one has suggested MediaWiki software phone home and 
give anyone any information (other than what might show up in an httpd 
log). Just make it something that can be turned off for the really 
paranoid types.

On the other hand, I'm pretty paranoid when it comes to "automatic 
updates" of things like this. I like to have the old code base that I 
can switch back to if anything goes wrong -- and things DO go wrong.

-- 
Henry