Re: [epp-dev] Time to retire the UDC?

[Igor Fedorenko <ifedorenko@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand and appreciate your concerns. I
mostly complain about timing. To me UDC was part of "public API"
provided to the projects by the Foundation and taking this out after
RC1 is rather unexpected.

Also see more details about how we planned to use UDC inline.

--
Regards,
Igor

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 12:48 AM, Wayne Beaton <wayne@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The hard part is sorting out what to do with the data. As I said, we
> have thus far been unable to generate any real value from the data. This
> partially due to the cost associated with careful dissemination of the
> data in accordance with the privacy policy. Mostly, however, everybody
> who has looked at the data has been able to only provide 'interesting'
> bits of insight; but no actual value of any worth to any Eclipse
> project, or organization. I cannot cite a single example of any change
> in a project's priorities resulting from the gathered usage data.

Maybe m2e would be the first such example. When somebody complains
about "my project does not work, m2e is broken" on the mailing list or
in bugzilla, it is impossible to tell if this is a problem for large
number of users or just a few (but very loud) individuals. So our plan
was to use the stats as a way to encourage community to work on more
popular plugins first and maybe even implement support for some of
them ourselves. Our idea was that developers would be far more willing
to invest their time in something they know would be used by many
others as opposed to one-off things.

>
> Don't you get plug-in usage data from Maven Central?
>

We need to know what Maven plugins are more and less popular among m2e
users (keyword is "m2e"). I don't believe this can be derived from
Maven Central.

> FWIW, I believe it would be inappropriate for an Eclipse project to
> gather usage data. The key questions are: where is the data stored and
> who is responsible for it?
>

Frankly, we assumed the Foundation already had this figured out and
m2e would be able to piggy-back on your existing infrastructure and
policies.

> This isn't a done deal. Make your case.
>
> Wayne
>
> On 05/21/2011 12:31 AM, Igor Fedorenko wrote:
>> m2e is (or should it be 'was' already?) planning to use UDC to collect
>> information about Maven plugins actually used by our users. m2e version
>> we release in June requires explicit support for each Maven plugin. This
>> is a fundamental change from previous versions, which did not have such
>> requirement. There are roughly 800 opensource maven plugins and without
>> usage statistics it will much harder for us to efficiently prioritise
>> m2e support work. It is unfortunate that this change is being proposed
>> so close to Indigo release date, leaving us without a chance to
>> implement an alternative solution, not to mention the effort we invested
>> building m2e/udc integration.
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Igor
>>
>> On 11-05-20 04:40 PM, Wayne Beaton wrote:
>>> Hey folks.
>>>
>>> We've been running the UDC for a number of years now. Despite my own
>>> efforts and the efforts of several individuals, companies, and
>>> university researchers, we have not yet been able to make any really
>>> valuable use out of the data. My sense is that the amount of effort that
>>> we've been spending far outstrips the value of the data collected. And,
>>> as the bug record indicates, we really need to spend more effort to just
>>> maintain the status quo.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, attracting additional committers to the project won't
>>> solve the problem. Ultimately, it's the huge volume of data that the
>>> main problem. Privacy concerns prevent us from making this data widely
>>> available, and careful dissemination to individuals has proven
>>> fruitless.
>>>
>>> Ian and I have discussed this and we feel that it is time to retire
>>> the UDC.
>>>
>>> I am concerned about making changes to the composition of the packages
>>> at this late date in our development cycle, but would like to recommend
>>> that we do so immediately to ensure adequate time for testing. I will
>>> plan to archive UDC following the Indigo release.
>>>
>>> Time is very short for discussion, but I am open to suggestions or
>>> counterarguments.
>>>
>>> Thanks for your attention and support.
>>>
>>> Wayne