If I create a OSS app with analytics to detect & log crashes with feature use, is it a bad practice?

catalog3115@lemmy.world to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 58 points –

If I create a OSS app with analytics to detect & log crashes with feature use, is it a bad practice? I think analytics is really helpful in finding:-

  • which features are worth developing &
  • which bugs needs to be solved first.

Edit...

Things Collected

  • IP Address for use ping (for country)
  • All crashes with IP
  • Feature use with IP Crashes are store for upto 6 months to solve bug but rest are collected and delete after 3 months

It is opt-out but user are informed about it during first / install time. To disable analytics Settings --> Privacy

I want to know right way to introduce analytics in OSS

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I think if you use your own Matomo instance I'm way more ok with it, than if you include google.

If your app could also be used by people from the EU, you have to be GDPR complaiant as IP adresses are considered personal information. The question if crash reports are necessary (in the sense of GDPR Art. 6) hasn't been decided yet AFAIK.

Crash reports really helps developers. A app can crash for various reason sometimes it's the device itself(not the concern of developers) but mostly some type of bug. We use analytics to prioritise which bug to solve.

For Example:- There are 2 bugs one in share feature another in export. If lots of people use share feature, then we priorities share feature bug

No I understand, I really do. I develop myself. The thing is, if it's opt-out, then it does not seem to be necessary. If it's necessary, then you have to show that your interest in bug fixing outweights the users right to privacy.