Smolt: Fedora Hardware Profiler

[Arthur Pemberton]

On 1/31/07, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-01-31 at 17:11 -0700, Tom Tromey wrote:
> > >>>>> "Ralf" == Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> writes:
> >
> > >> The smolt data looked quite nice to me.  Good stuff to know.
> >
> > Ralf> Pardon, but you'd better never mention the word "security" in a Fedora
> > Ralf> context again ;)
> >
> > Yeah.  It's kind of hard to want to get involved again.
> >
> > I understand you're more worried about people somehow getting your
> > hardware profile than I am.  That's even understandable.  What I don't
> > understand is why clicking "No" is not enough.
> It's probably a cultural difference.
>
> In Europe, esp. in Germany, "data collectionitis of certain enterprises"
> and "data privacy" are _VERY_ _HOT_ political topics.
>
> This manifests at various places, e.g. Germany having very restrictive
> laws on "data privacy" and the public/press/media's attitude being very
> hostile against anybody "collecting data". Also, probably unlike in many
> other parts of the world people around here are conscious about "data
> privacy" and often have a negative attitude against institutions
> collecting data.

Ok.

> Fact is, what you seem to take for granted, isn't in Germany. The legal
> details are complicated, it would require to be a laywer to elaborate,
> but German's laws mandate "explicit opt-in" and mandate explicit
> regulations on many other details (e.g. timed deletion of data)
> in many situations.

So what you're saying is that the hardware profiler should be opt in only?

> Though this isn't 100% legally mandated, this has lead to many people in
> Germany to consider "opt-in" as a matter of fairness and consider
> enterprises choosing "opt-out" to be playing foul and to be jerks.
> I had mentioned this aspect in a very early mail of this thread, but ...
> this had been pushed aside.

Ok

> IMO, you and Fedora are vastly underestimating the situation. You
> understand you are playing with a loaded gun here and are better off
> taking concerns about it seriously.

I dislike people who corrupt everything I like with legal mumbo jumbo
-- 
Fedora Core 6 and proud