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Policies/Uploading and Downloading from Eclipse Software Policy
This policy is concerned with Eclipse Foundation project code "calling home" or otherwise providing data out of user installations to Eclipse Foundation Servers.
This policy applies to Eclipse projects that need to:
- check for updates;
- provide a heartbeat;
- gather usage statistics;
- harvest data from a user's workstation; or
- otherwise collect information from user installations.
Contents
Opt-in
Any call home service must be "opt-in". That is, a user must agree to participate (agreement may be implicit due to the nature of the operation)
If the nature of the data being collected changes, the user must be informed of the changes and be given the opportunity to explicitly agree to continue participation.
The user must be able to review any data included with the call home before it is sent to any Eclipse Foundation Server.
Private Information
Any information provided from an end-user installation to an Eclipse Foundation server is subject to the terms of the Eclipse Privacy Policy.
Raw data, which may include non-obvious potentially private information, must be transferred securely.
Raw data must be stored securely and access to the data needs to be strictly controlled. To access the raw data, an individual must be a committer, and sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with The Eclipse Foundation.
Obvious means of identifying a specific individual or organization (e.g. IP address) must not be persisted.
Reasonable effort must be taken to avoid persisting or disseminating information that can inadvertently be used to identify an individual or organization.
Storage
The target for data collected by content distributed from an Eclipse Foundation-managed server must also be an Eclipse Foundation-managed server (e.g. the Eclipse packages must be configured to send data to an eclipse.org server). This can be configurable by adopters to send to an alternate server.
Dissemination
Aggregate data needs to be publicly accessible.
The retention policy for publicly accessible data must be documented.
Auditing and Approval
Documentation, including a full description of the nature of all information captured by a call-home service, must be publicly accessible.
The implementation of a call-home service must be reviewed and approved by the implementing project's Project Management Committee (PMC).
Any project implementing a call-home service must get approval from EMO(ED).
Common Mechanism
Reasonable effort must be undertaken to leverage existing "call home" mechanisms rather than create new ones.