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Interesting...

I wonder whether people will accept this sort of tracking? Strange that on a website, people will accept the fact that their usage is probably stored for later analysis, but with a standalone application, I would imagine there would be calls of "spyware" for doing this sort of thing...

I understand your concern/point...

I don't think its gonna be a "spyware" call. It's more of a quality tracking feature for the software being developed.
This library works the same way as collecting analytics on a website by emulating the google analytics tracking javascript.

>I don't think its gonna be a "spyware" call. It's more of a quality tracking feature for the software being developed.>

You are thinking only from the POV of the developer. The user doesn't know that -- he just sees an application trying to get out through the firewall for no imaginable reason, and he "raises the alarm" in a blog entry... and you've got a fire to quench. More in my comment below.

Oh, I realise that, and kind of agree. I'm just saying that I don't think some users would... There seems to be a different mindset with the different apps... Webapps are seen as "other people's programs", wheras people tend to think of local apps as "their own", and when they start calling home, people get concerned (even if the concerns are unfounded)

There are some applications that "call home" to report anonymous usage data for similar reasons (music players like WinAmp and the Windows Media Player spring to mind, but I've seen others).

I believe they *all* ask you if you want to allow this as part of the install, and definitely it's in the preferences.

Every once in a while you'll see an article on Slashdot pop up when someone discovers that an application is secretly sending information back home, and there's usually a pretty big stink about it.

I personally never, ever enable these features. I understand the usefulness of the data to the companies, but I also really want to keep control over my data, and what data is leaving my computer to head out into the wild. I don't think I would ever intentionally use or recommend an application that I realized was sending information out without my knowledge, and/or without my permission.

You may only be sending the number of times each window is opened, and perhaps errors that were thrown. But how can I reasonably find out:
a) what you're sending exactly in every case
b) whether you screwed up the implementation somewhere, and my personal information is going to be mixed in with a stack trace
c) that a rogue programmer didn't tweak the reporting system maliciously to send himself passwords, etc. (e.g., google G-Archiver).
What if the very fact that I'm *using* your application is something I don't want to broadcast? Maybe using it on company time signals to our IT department that I'm goofing off on company time -- or running an unapproved application -- and bad things ensue?
What if I'm using a very expensive metered internet connection and your callbacks are running up my bill?

Those are two situations off the top of my head; I'm sure there are others that we will not have foreseen.

If you do distribute something like this, make sure it's very obvious, that it can be disabled as part of the install and within preferences, and think hard about the users you might lose by implementing it in the first place....

jtheory,

Google Analytics does not track any user sensitive or privacy related data. It tracks the IP address (which does tracked by webserver anyway) & area/page of the website being visited. There are millions of websites already using it and I don't remember seeing a pop-up/notice window saying that this website is being tracked by Google Analytics.

As I mentioned earlier, JGoogleAnalytics is a very light-weight emulation of Google Analytics javascript code. It makes a HTTP request to the google-analytics server with the application tracking code, hostname and focus point(some logic point of interest in the app) data. It doesn't send anything more than that. It's a open-source tool. So, feel free to take a look at the code and make any comments/complaints/suggestions you may have.

One thing is.. I can consider adding a preference setting in Library Finder tool to enable/disable option on tracking the usage data.

I totally agree

Eclipse 3.4 (the next release) has a new feature called Usage Data Collector (UDC).
You can read more details here: http://www.eclipse.org/epp/usagedata/index.php