[mholt]

Hey everyone -- Matt here.

Not quite sure why this is news; we've been discussing telemetry for a long[1] time[2].

I haven't actually watched the video because I've been really busy finishing my last semester of graduate school and switching research labs to start my masters thesis this week.

Several of us in the research community have agreed that telemetry can be a net good for the Web. Similar to how Firefox, the privacy-focused browser, has telemetry on by default to help improve the Web.

A huge thanks to everyone who contributes to Caddy and makes it -- in my opinion -- one of the best, easiest-to-use web servers around. We have over 200 contributors and it is amazing what the open source community has pulled together, despite the growing pains we faced last year [3].

I hope you love using Caddy, and if you don't, you don't have to use it.

[1]: https://caddy.community/t/caddy-0-11-will-have-telemetry-dis...

[2]: https://caddy.community/t/the-caddy-telemetry-project/3224?u...

[3]: https://caddy.community/t/the-realities-of-being-a-foss-main...

[cjcampbell]

I haven’t used Caddy myself and am not prepared to weigh in on the telemetry discussion, but I still think you deserve a thank you for such a sizeable contribution to the open source community!

[neflabs]

Matt, your response here is a very nice advertisement for Caddy, and a glimpse into your academic life, but you aren't addressing the very real privacy concerns of your users.

[detaro]

Looking through the discussions linked, he's done more for a reasonable discussion of this than you have. And I say that as someone who's not a fan of many things around Caddy (and would very much prefer opt-out if I were in any danger of using stock Caddy).

Next time, maybe spend more time on elaborating on the "very real privacy concerns" and less on personalities.

[neflabs]

How is deleting comments from his own community "done more for a reasonable discussion of this than you have"? Your argument has no basis, you're simply shooting the messenger.

[detaro]

that's not the only thing he has done in that discussion, and I'm basing my comment on that.

Your video contains little argument that hasn't been already in the discussion, goes in no detail what specifically you object to, personally insults him, and being a video isn't a very good contribution in a text-forum anyways: in sum more then enough reasons for a moderator to remove it, and adding very little to the overall discussion.

[jonathanoliver]

I'm confused. If telemetry is an option and you can opt out, why not just do that? Also, because everything is open source, you're welcome to inspect the source to verify that it's behaving as expected and not reporting telemetry. You mentioned that you're not a Go programmer and/or you don't have time to do this...okay, so pay someone else who is a Go programmer to do this for you. Or is any software that costs money too much?

Matt has a right, as the creator of that work, to ask for some form of compensation for the portion of his life invested into the project. It's a completely fair and reasonable request. If you're set on avoiding any form of compensation (financial or otherwise), then you don't have any rights to demand anything from him. Just go use nginx and be done with it.

[neflabs]

You're conflating two issues. If Matt wants money, we're happy to pay. That's a separate issue from telemetry.

We don't want a) a sole developer making decisions which the community has rejected, and b) software which sends telemetry by default.

[gus_massa]

> a) a sole developer making decisions which the community has rejected

Have you run a poll to be sure that >50% of the community rejects the change? Anyway, online polls are not reliable, it's difficult to be avoid sock puppets, people that don't use the software, ensure that people that disagree with your proposal care to vote, ...

Just make a fork and if most of the community agree with you, your fork will be most popular and shadow the original.

[jonathanoliver]

If Matt feels that having telemetry on by default is the form of compensation he would like for his time/investment, I don't see that as a problem.

I can see that different people would take exception to that which is why there's an off switch for telemetry.

If you're having a difficult time accepting that telemetry exists at all, then I'm almost certain Matt would be happy to create a non-telemetry version for paid subscribers.

[onewhonknocks]

One can easily opt-out. What's the issue here?

[slenk]

I just went to the Caddy website and GitHUb - if I was a new user I don't know that telemetry is being collected nor how to turn it off.

[detaro]

Telemetry is being discussed, it hasn't been added yet. (And people have rightly pointed out in the discussion that it has to be well-documented to be acceptable)