>If you can't identify who your users are, you can't ask them questions, and you can't tell if they're "vocal 0.001%" or "vocal 40%" of your userbase — then what consideration could you give, as a software developer, for their needs?
I'd ask for feedback, and when that feedback is given freely, even when unsolicited, I'd take it on board and act accordingly. I would ask if people want to participate in "telemetry" and "studies", not assume they do without affirmative prior consent.
Mozilla is breathtakingly bad at this. They're about as responsive to feedback as GNOME/Freedesktop.
I most certainly would not put spyware in the product and turn it on without asking first. I'd most certainly never get myself into a situation where an oversight can simultaneously break every copy of my software ever deployed.
This idea that you require all copies of your software to phone home to make effective development decisions is bunk. We got along just fine without that garbage for decades.
I'd ask for feedback, and when that feedback is given freely, even when unsolicited, I'd take it on board and act accordingly. I would ask if people want to participate in "telemetry" and "studies", not assume they do without affirmative prior consent.
Mozilla is breathtakingly bad at this. They're about as responsive to feedback as GNOME/Freedesktop.
I most certainly would not put spyware in the product and turn it on without asking first. I'd most certainly never get myself into a situation where an oversight can simultaneously break every copy of my software ever deployed.
This idea that you require all copies of your software to phone home to make effective development decisions is bunk. We got along just fine without that garbage for decades.