[GNC-dev] OARS classification of gnucash

Geert Janssens geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be
Thu Aug 22 14:33:20 EDT 2019


Op donderdag 22 augustus 2019 19:50:38 CEST schreef John Ralls:
> > On Aug 22, 2019, at 10:00 AM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > Gnome and Flathub use age rating data to classify applications as
> > appropriate or not for certain groups of users. Both are using the Open
> > Age Rating Service (OARS) [1] for this.
> > 
> > I went to the trouble of filling the questionnaire for gnucash and ended
> > up
> > 
> > with this rating:
> >  <content_rating type="oars-1.1">
> >  
> >    <content_attribute id="social-info">mild</content_attribute>
> >  
> >  </content_rating>
> > 
> > "social-info" may be a bit odd, but when selecting this option, I was
> > considering the AlphaVantage API key which I presume can/will be used by
> > Alpha Vantage to track the user.
> > 
> > Does anyone have remarks/issues with this classification ? If so, please
> > share, otherwise I'll use this for the next gnucash release.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > Geert
> > 
> > [1] https://hughsie.github.io/oars/
> 
> I don't know that it matters much, I wouldn't really expect a 12 year old to
> be interested in GnuCash anyway... and besides, 12 year olds know how to
> get around most age restrictions.
> 
Sure, it doesn't matter that much, but the OARS piqued my curiosity.

Also you're probably looking for more in it than it really does. It just 
labels applications. There's no actual restricting going on.

Having said that, it is thanks to a system as OARS that users can easily know 
our application is not riddled with advertisements or trackers. For us that 
may be obvious. We're so used to this in the open source world. Flathub (or 
the Ubuntu app store for that matter) however also ships commercial 
applications, which do have advertisements or language that's not acceptable 
in all circumstances.

> I don't think that there's anything tracking related that the Alphavantage
> API key gets them. They can already get the requesting IP and associate the
> list of requested prices with it just like all of the other price sources.
> That's not to say that GnuCash users who use price quotes or online banking
> aren't exposed to tracking, just that it's not limited to Alphavantage.
> It's anyway pretty minor compared to web-browser use, so I went looking for
> Epiphany's age rating and couldn't find one.

The age rating is fairly new and still voluntary. So many applications don't 
do it yet.

Further the definition of "Mild" according to the OARS is:
"Using any online api"
We do use online api's via Finance::Quote so that's why I selected it. How 
much tracking actually goes on we don't know. We don't have to. We only warn 
the user they may potentially be tracked.

Regards,

Geert





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