[theme-reviewers] Redux framework may be dialing home

[Otto]

Okay, okay. Let's all calm down a second here.


On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Dovy Paukstys <dovy at reduxframework.com>
 wrote:

> Emil:
> Then can I request that Yoast has the same process be given to them? I'm
> all for fairness here and I would never do anything that I didn't see
> another market player doing.
>


Dovy,

Firstly, there's no case where a plugin can't have tracking on an opt-in
basis. If the user has the choice, and it defaults to disabled, then it's
fine.

However, I'm having a very hard time seeing where a theme should be allowed
to have *any* tracking of this nature, even if it is on a fully opt-in
basis.

A theme is supposed to be changing the look of the site. Not adding
features. Not adding crazy weird ways to do new things with content. It's a
*theme*.

Now, from what is being said, this wasn't "opt-in", probably because of a
bug. Ignoring that, if a "theme" shouldn't have tracking of user data, then
I'm definitely not seeing why a "theme-framework", which to me is like
half-a-theme, should have this in any way.

Theme authors are responsible for the behavior of their themes, same as
plugin authors. But, and this is the important point here, you're not the
theme author in this case. You're putting tracking code into a piece of
code for other people to integrate into their theme, and then tracking
those users a further level down. I can't see that as acceptable on any
level, opt-in or not.

Honestly, I've been against "frameworks" of all stripes being allowed in
the repository for quite a while. This seems to cement it even further, to
me. How can a *framework* justify tracking user data like this? If we're
going to have to police frameworks at this level, then my vote is going to
come down to "no frameworks period".

In other words, yes, this seems pretty damn bad to me. Anonymous or not, if
users are having their data sent elsewhere and even the person who wrote
their theme may not know about it, then that is a real big problem, as I
see it.

-Otto
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/attachments/20141016/c2f34764/attachment.html>