Is leaving the email as a required field for registration against FOSS philosophy by any means? even if it won’t be used for anything other than user verification/notifications if agreed by the user?

  • xarvos
    10·
    3 years ago

    No. You’re probably confusing FOSS and privacy.

      • rysiek@szmer.info
        7·
        3 years ago

        Let me add to this: I’d say if the requirement is to have an account with a proprietary walled garden like Facebook or Twitter, then yes it would be against of FOSS philosophy (separately of privacy concerns).

        The difference being: e-mail is a pretty standard service, there are plenty of providers (from Big Tech to the Tutanotas of this world), and you can even run your own e-mail server if you want (I happen to do just that). So, you are not forced to use a particular proprietary platform.

        • hammsvietroOP
          2·
          3 years ago

          that’s a fair point. Just what I was wondering, thanks!

  • smallcircles
    5·
    3 years ago

    I don’t remember the details right now but you can do email verification without the need to store the email address in your db, with a hash in the activation link.

    • hammsvietroOP
      3·
      3 years ago

      good call! I’ll look into this, I’m starting an elixir project and there’s no updated for captchas except reCaptcha support, I’ll see if I can find a secure way to handle this.

  • Liwott
    2·
    3 years ago

    What is the FOSS philosophy? Whether something is FOSS is a statement only about its source code, the data it collects is a separate issue.

    • hammsvietroOP
      1·
      3 years ago

      Aren’t you talking about Open Source? the Free Software movement has many beliefs, a few of them are in this community’s description

      • Liwott
        3·
        3 years ago

        I’m talking about free software, as defined by the fsf. A software is free if it comes with its source code and a license that gives some rights about this source code. Doesn’t matter what horrible features your software has, it is free as long as one can edit them out and distribute their edited version. I am not aware of a definition of free software that includes requirements on the software’s features (like collecting email addresses), maybe you can link to one?

        Note that this community’s description is about free culture in general, which is broader than free software. You probably meant that rather than FOSS. Sorry if it seems like I am playing with word, it’s just that I first commented as a response to your question without paying attention to the community.

        Now I am not sure about how much it changes my previous answer. If you run an online service, it is probably legitimate to ask for a way to contact your users, as long as you only use it for what they gave you their consent for. If the underlying software is free, people who don’t want to give you that information can still run their own instance of your service. Creating a free software doesn’t come with the duty of maintaining servers that run it, so you are free to impose whatever condition on the ones you run.