[Koha] Use of Google Analytics and +1 on Koha website

[David Nind]

Hi Mirko.

I am wondering why a free and open source software community would
> use a corporation's spyware like Google Analytics on their users.


While I can understand the sentiment, I don't have an issue with free
software projects using Google and other webmaster tools and services on
their websites. Many free software projects do use these tools. Many don't,
I assume because their philosophy is to only use free software (as in the
fsf.org / GPL four freedoms sense).

While I can't speak for the Koha community web team, my thought would be
that when the koha-community.org website was setup  in early 2010 Google
Analytics was the only real game in town (unless you like log file
analysis). Google Analytics also doesn't require any additional hosting
resources (remembering that the services/servers etc that provide the Koha
community infrastructure are provided by community members and support
companies, at their cost).

Now there are more alternatives to choose from, including Piwiki and
services offered by other companies. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_analytics_software

I think it is great that the site is using Piwik - it is a great product
that is improving quickly, provides good information, is easy to use, and
you 'own' the data.

However, whether we like it or not, Google Analytics is very ubiquitous on
the web today. Many organisations use it. Most would be reluctant to give
it up - if they do consider other options they would most likely run it
side-by-side for some time to see how they compare.

I would not classify it as 'spyware', no more so than any other cookies set
by websites.

What information does Google Analytics collect? Google Analytics is
implemented through a cookie which is placed on the visitor's
computer along with code in the webpage which collects visitor data and
relays it to Google's servers for processing. It generally collects:

   -     IP addresses
   -     Geographical location of the IP address
   -     Pages visited
   -     How the visitor arrived at the webpage
   -     Computer information, such as the operating system, screen size,
   browser browser being used.

That does not mean that there are not any privacy issues. See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics#Privacy_issues for
information on some of these.

For people concerned about privacy there are options to block it (search
Google for more options 8-' ):
http://www.brighthub.com/guides/google-analytics.aspx

minus the "give all your data to an
> evil corporation"-part -- if you think analysing Koha users is
> neccessary.
>

I'm not in the Google is an "evil corporation" camp, and think this is a
more extreme view. There is the http://www.dataliberation.org/ if you are
concerned about Google's dominance and practices.

The purpose of web analytics, whatever the tool, is not analysing users per
se. It is about how people are using your website, whether it is helping
you achieve your goals, finding out what they are looking at and for, how
to improve it and make it a better experience. I would be happy to do this
if the data was available, from whatever source.

I would appreciate a discussion about the why and personally prefer
> these things to disappear so I am able to send people to the
> community website in good conscience.
>

The Koha community uses free software for everything I can see at
koha-community.org: Wordpress for the website, Wikimedia for the wiki,
Bugzilla for bug (and feature) tracking, Git for revision control, Mailman
for mailing lists, Jenkins for continuous integration testing, Linux as the
operating system that Koha runs on, Perl and all the associated modules,
translation using Pootle, etc.

Koha community members come from across the spectrum in terms of awareness
of free software. Many are very strong free software supporters. There are
also probably many community members who don't have such strong views, but
use and contribute to Koha because it is great software, has many benefits
for them and their organisation, and is free. I would imagine many also use
non-free software, whether by choice or because of the policies of the
organisations they work for.

Koha offers a great free software product and community. It is developed in
a very open and transparent way and reflects the best aspects of free
software, in the truest sense.

Promoting your website (any website, not just for free software projects)
and understanding how your 'customers' use it are important parts of having
a web presence, especially for a world-wide community. The Google webmaster
tools used (Google Analytics; G+ - for promoting Koha, a good thing since
there is often confusion between koha-community.org and the fork; Google
search - searching across the koha-community.org sites e.g. site, wiki,
manual, mailing lists, irc logs etc.) all play a useful part in this,
whether free software or not.

The Koha community also uses other "non-free" web services to promote Koha
e.g Twitter, Youtube.

While there are alternatives for some of these (
http://libreprojects.net/), it requires community members to propose
them, work on them, and
probably in some cases pay for them, especially where hosting is required.

Should the Koha community have a privacy statement to address any concerns
about privacy? I'm not sure if one is required. I'm also not sure how easy
it would be to do, as community members come from countries with different
privacy laws, requirements and cultures. It would require someone to
propose it as an RFC on the wiki, to develop one, and get approval a
general IRC meeting (
http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_meeting,_13_June_2012).

I think I've rambled enough now......

David Nind | david.nind at gmail.com
PO Box 12367, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand 6144
h. +64 4 9720 600 | m. +64 21 0537 847 | w. +64 4 8906 098

Note: I am an individual fsf.org member, use Ubunbtu as my desktop of
choice (closely followed by Debian), use Piwiki and other free software
e.g. Drupal, Firefox, LibreOffice. I also use Windows and other non-free
software when I have to, although my first preference is to look for and
use free software.