Thinking of leveraging Scarf for download stats for my addons

[Jack Yaz]

One thing I find lacking in Github is that I have no visibility of how many downloads, unique downloads etc. that my addons get. This is something I can get by using something like Scarf's gateway. Obviously, I'm aware that this is essentially a form of tracking, but it is effectively no different to me hosting my own web server and tracking downloads there, except I don't have the time to securely host file downloads, and I would like the addons to still be hosted by Github. Scraf gives me this, by acting as a redirect.

Platform

Scarf empowers you to turn anonymized open-source usage data into actionable insights to fuel your sales and marketing strategies.

about.scarf.sh

About

Scarf empowers you to turn anonymized open-source usage data into actionable insights to fuel your sales and marketing strategies.

about.scarf.sh

I wanted to post about it here, as I am only considering at this stage, and wanted to see what the community's thoughts on this sort of thing is. Comments/suggestions welcomed!

 

[visortgw]

One thing I find lacking in Github is that I have no visibility of how many downloads, unique downloads etc. that my addons get. This is something I can get by using something like Scarf's gateway. Obviously, I'm aware that this is essentially a form of tracking, but it is effectively no different to me hosting my own web server and tracking downloads there, except I don't have the timeto securely host file downloads, and I would like the addons to still be hosted by Github. Scraf gives me this, by acting as a redirect.

Platform

Scarf empowers you to turn anonymized open-source usage data into actionable insights to fuel your sales and marketing strategies.

about.scarf.sh

About

Scarf empowers you to turn anonymized open-source usage data into actionable insights to fuel your sales and marketing strategies.

about.scarf.sh

I wanted to post about it here, as I am only considering at this stage, and wanted to see what the community's thoughts on this sort of thing is. Comments/suggestions welcomed!

This sounds perfectly reasonable on your part as the developer of free add-ons!

 

[JGrana]

No issues here. I also like, as a gateway, you can use any host to store your code.

BTW, I would actually like to know how many times I have downloaded your addons! Many times I'm sure ;-)

 

[dazedandlost]

I don't like being tracked. My position on this is probably among the more extreme that you might find. I do not apologise for that.

That said, I have no problem at all with what you are suggesting because your suggestion is to track your addons and not to track any specific individual.

Also, enormous thanks for your work and for making it available the way you do.

To you, and everyone, I hope your Christmas was wonderful and 2022+ will be all you hope for.

 

[Jack Yaz]

I don't like being tracked. My position on this is probably among the more extreme that you might find. I do not apologise for that.

That said, I have no problem at all with what you are suggesting because your suggestion is to track your addons and not to track any specific individual.

Also, enormous thanks for your work and for making it available the way you do.

To you, and everyone, I hope your Christmas was wonderful and 2022+ will be all you hope for.

I don't like being tracked either and value my privacy. That's why Scarf seems like a good fit - the data is de-personalised and I'm only interested in the number of installs and updates people do, so I can see how popular a script and features are.
To be honest, Microsoft/Github probably harvest a lot more data, they just don't make it visible to repository owners!

 

[thelonelycoder]

I don't like being tracked. My position on this is probably among the more extreme that you might find. I do not apologise for that.

With the time we developers spend to make what we do, it is more than justified to at least know how often our scripts are installed/updated.

 

[dazedandlost]

With the time we developers spend to make what we do, it is more than justified to at least know how often our scripts are installed/updated.

Agree completely (as I tried to say), and thank you for your work. I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say.

 

[kstamand]

I realize this is an old thread, but checking to see if there is an alternative approach discovered or agreed upon that this community of add-on developers may have settled on for tracking the number of downloads of your install/update scripts??

Background - I'm looking to leverage Scarf so I can track the number of downloads or updates for any add-on scripts I develop, but I want to align with other add-on developers?

 

[Viktor Jaep]

I realize this is an old thread, but checking to see if there is an alternative approach discovered or agreed upon that this community of add-on developers may have settled on for tracking the number of downloads of your install/update scripts??

Background - I'm looking to leverage Scarf so I can track the number of downloads or updates for any add-on scripts I develop, but I want to align with other add-on developers?

I believe using a service like Scarf (specifically Scarf Gateway) for open-source scripts fundamentally undermines the privacy goals of the user. Because you are now using a "middleman" (Scarf) instead of going direct to Github, you're dealing with things like: IP address exposure & logging, device fingerprinting, supply chain trust, metadata leakage, potentially phoning home, etc.

The ethical thing to do would be to CLEARLY warn people ahead of time that their privacy is being compromised by downloading your script, and they would need to understand the consequences of what happens after hitting the download URL.

As far as any alternatives, I have not heard of any.

 

[bennor]

The Scarf privacy policy. Take it for what it's worth.

Privacy Policy

about.scarf.sh

Also on a side note, due to this being a necroposted discussion it should be noted that Jack Yaz has indicated (in 2022) that they are no longer actively developing their scripts. Most if not all of Jack Yaz's scripts are being partially or fully maintained by another developer team/person (Team AMTM-OSR).

amtm - Announcing AMTM-OSR, AMTM Orphaned Script Revival repository

Life just happens - to all of us. Interests and priorities change and we get older everyday. Some are no longer with us, others have moved on to other pastures. We're all glad you were part of this amazing community. So, thank you to all of you for what you contributed script wise. You know who...

www.snbforums.com

AMTM Orphaned Script Revival

A Repo of Orphaned AMTM Scripts. AMTM Orphaned Script Revival has 14 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

github.com

 

[dave14305]

I realize this is an old thread, but checking to see if there is an alternative approach discovered or agreed upon that this community of add-on developers may have settled on for tracking the number of downloads of your install/update scripts??

Background - I'm looking to leverage Scarf so I can track the number of downloads or updates for any add-on scripts I develop, but I want to align with other add-on developers?

The closest proxy you will find is the number of forum users posting in your thread and the number of likes your posts about the script receive. Keep developing the script because you find it personally useful. When you no longer feel that way, hang it up.