[libreoffice-design] Minutes from the UX/design meeting 2022-Jul-13

[Eyal Rozenberg]

There are a more concerns, and questions, and potential answers to
questions. These include additions I've made after the session
concluded, based partially on my points in the chat, and as suggested I
do by Heiko. For now I'll just add the Questions section after my additions.

Questions

     + Why is it necessary to collect LO user data?
     + What LO user data (or aggregation-of-data) is it necessary to
collect?
    + wouldn't it be better to not collect data at all (rather than doing
      the PP approach)
      + open source community tried with Discourse, for example, but
better we reclaim data; data is key for many questions; PP is neutral
and transparent
     + Is the list of investors in PP, and how much they invested,
publicly accessible?
     + Will the revenues and specific revenue sources of the cooperative
be accessible to the public?
      + PP does not own the data; PP is a cooperative, all income will
be shared
          + Shared by the investors in PP?
    + is PP open source / what license
      + yes, dual-licensing
    + what would be the scenario when PP becomes included
      + probably a question "Do you want to share data..." as opt-in
          + That's manipulative and inappropriate:
     1. Many people just click "yes yes yes" to get through
installations, assuming it's all benign.
     2. People will be presented an imbalanced, overly positive
description of what this data collection will mean. Why? Because TDF
expects to gain something from data collection, i.e. has an interest in
people saying yes. Possibly also because TDF stands to collect money
from Yes clicks.
     Something more than an extension - and not one that the installer
prompts the user to install - is problematic.
    + amount of data is frightening
        + 10 years of extensive Google usage is about 100MB
        + This is a Red Herring. What's frightening is that information
about people's habits, choices, tendencies, proclivities - maybe even
aspects of the contents of their documents, determined indirectly - will
be collected. Delicate personal information may sometimes require only a
single sentence - 100 B, not 100 MB - to express.
        + an option might be to keep raw data for only a short period and
condense then
    + feedback channel, something that allows the individual to compare
with the average
      + could be something for the future
    + include questionaires eg to split user types
      + demographics are included already
      + identification with brands is built-in
    + any legal constraints
      + LibreOffice sends crash reports to TDF
      + Such data collection may get LO kicked off of platforms/systems
with commitment to user privacy.
      + Such data collection may also prevent LO use in organizations,
as a potential security hazard (e.g. governments, large organizations
with IT privacy policies)
    + what are the next steps
      + Unless there is A clear characterization of user data that must,
or should, be collected, that has been approved by an appropriate body
of TDF, I believe it is illegitimate to proceed further at all.
      + involve the ESC
      + write a blog post and involve the community