MacPorts Statistics (was Re: usage numbers for macports vs. homebrew?)

[James Berry]

On Mar 22, 2014, at 12:04 PM, Clemens Lang <cal at macports.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>> Just a concerned question:
>> 	Why is that database given away to anyone who asks?
> 
> I agree this is a valid question; let's discuss that before I hand out
> any statistics data. However, there are other parts of the database besides
> the schema that are rather hard to setup (e.g. the database of ports).
> 
>> Sure, there are only 10 users who have committed all their information to
>> Clemens’ server neverpanic.de, but I don’t see why information like that
>> shall be spread even further.
> 
> The plus of information you'd get from a dump that you currently cannot see
> on the web interface is the connection between a user's UUID and the ports
> he installed. You cannot drill down on users in the current web interface,
> even if the data allows doing that.
> I think however, that's a feature we don't want to support, and maybe I
> should not be handing out the statistics data (you can generate some for
> your own local tests) but just the data from the categories and ports
> tables.

On the other hand, the user data is anonymized by the UUID, right? Is there anything in the data that ties the data to a user, beyond the UUID, which is generated randomly by the user install? ipaddress?

I’m not arguing that the data should be completely public, but checking where we are were the data to become completely public through accident or hack, etc. And maybe I’m suggesting that it might not be so dangerous to make the data available to a trusted committer as a step toward improving the system...

James