Question about Google Analytics usage on ros.org

[Blaumaus]

Hi ROS maintainers 👋

First of all, thank you for the incredible work on ROS :)

I noticed that the ROS website and docs currently use Google Analytics and wanted to ask whether privacy-friendly, OSS analytics alternatives have ever been considered for usage insights.

I'm the creator of Swetrix, an open-source, privacy-first analytics platform used by several OSS projects and documentation sites. It provides traffic insights without cookies, and is privacy-friendly by default.

This is not a request to switch - I'm mainly curious whether this is something the project has discussed before, and whether privacy concerns around analytics are relevant for you guys.

If useful, I’d be happy to:

• share how other OSS projects approach analytics, or
• help test Swetrix on a non-critical page for comparison.

Either way, thanks again for maintaining such an important project.

Best,
Andrii

[gbiggs]

Using an open-source analytics tool, and one that is more privacy-focused, is something we are interested in. However we have to balance this with any need to maintain our own instance, which some open-source analytics systems require, and the time required to change. It's not likely to happen until next year at the earliest. I will add Swetrix to the list of ones to consider, though.