[theme-reviewers] Redux framework may be dialing home

Thu Oct 16 19:49:25 UTC 2014

My concern is that you’re tacking without consent. Given that, even if you asked the user the question we would have removed the option (and tracking).

From: theme-reviewers [mailto:theme-reviewers-bounces at lists.wordpress.org] On Behalf Of Dovy Paukstys
Sent: 16 October 2014 20:44
To: Discussion list for WordPress theme reviewers.
Subject: Re: [theme-reviewers] Redux framework may be dialing home

@Tammie Lister Indeed. We want to be completely transparent. 

We do opt-in tracking to discover any issues we may have with various plugins and setup as we're integrated to themes and plugins. That is open and wide for anyone to see. We do this because we don't want people to think we're "stealing" anything that pinpoints them, and also lets users see what they're up against when developing.

The sites are completely anonymous. There's no way for us to track it to any individual site at all.

We took direction for our tracking class from the quite widely used WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin.

The class does the following:

*	Checks once a week and submits to our tracking service using a unique one-way hash.

That's it. Then we compare our user base vs what we're coding about. When we see a user post about an inconsistency with a theme or plugin, we inspect more heavily if there is more widely used.

If users wish, they can also load their own "hash" in their theme to see a drill-down of their theme's data. All that does is add an extra developer key, and allow us to filter the results.

@Srikanth Koneru We did not update to WordPress.com since I didn't think WordPress.com allows frameworks and we do not have access. If WP.com DOES allow Redux, then man I need to redo my WordPress.com themes I am building!

@Emil Uzelac Would you prefer us to not visibly show the tracking data? We use it show statistics and most used plugins that utilize Redux.

@Afzaal (ThinkUpThemes) Is the concern that we're tracking the issue or that we're showing it publicly? This is COMPLETELY anonymous. If it's a concern, we can remove that site instantly. We'll just put it behind our developer's login wall instead.

@everyone Again all, we are completely transparent here and we're not doing anything different than one of the most successful plugins on WordPress.org does, except that we're showing the data to be transparent.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Tammie Lister <karmatosed at gmail.com> wrote:

So Dovy, can you explain this also:
http://jsbin.com/ugELElU/1

Thanks,
Tammie

On 16/10/2014 20:28, Dovy Paukstys wrote:

@Otto + Others: 

Lead developer of Redux Framework here.

In regards to Redux Framework, there was indeed an error in our code causing some instances to dial-back even when set to opt-out. This was not our intent or desire to "dial-home". It was a mistake in coding between JS and PHP. 

A patch has been made and new version of Redux has been deployed to WP.com and our repository. Everything should now fit well within your requirements.

Redux aims to always follow the guidelines. If you find any issue in the future, do not hesitate to contact me directly at dovy at reduxframework.com. I am now also on this list and will watch for any issues that may come up.

In our next newsletter I will also urge developers to update to the newest version of Redux especially for WP.com themes.

Thank you.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Towfiq I. <tislam100 at gmail.com> wrote:

Before suspending, I request you to warn the developers about this in the review ticket. Many of the developers doesn't even know about this. One of my themes uses redux and I noticed the tracking.php file while developing and removed it. Maybe they should have a chance to do that too.

Just my two cents

On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 12:29 AM, Emil Uzelac <emil at uzelac.me> wrote:

I'll see if I can find them all in trac.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:

The hell? 

The answer is a very clear cut no, you can't do that. If any themes in the directory currently have this, they should be immediately suspended.

-Otto

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:09 PM, Emil Uzelac <emil at uzelac.me> wrote:

Not to mention that what they done here, well sucks: http://jsbin.com/ugELElU/1. Redux is revealing more than they should!

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Thanks
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