zlacker

>>Adriaa+(OP)
Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that.

So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entirely using languages that I'm very familiar with. The backend is plain Node.js without any framework, the database is PostgreSQL, and the frontend is written in plain JavaScript.

I learned a lot while coding, like sending requests as JSON requires an extra (pre-flight) request, so in my script I use the "text/plain" content type, which does not require an extra request. The script is publicly available (https://github.com/simpleanalytics/cdn.simpleanalytics.io/bl...). It works out of the box with modern frontend frameworks by overwriting the "history.pushState"-function.

I am transparent about what I collect (https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect) so please let me know if you have any questions. My analytics tool is just the start for what I want to achieve in the non-tracking movement.

We can be more valuable without exploiting user data.

>>Adriaa+8
This look great—have bookmarked it for future projects.

I would however a little more skeptical with tools claiming to be privacy-first than I would be with GA (who I presume are not privacy-first). On that note, some quick questions:

- Any plans to open source? I've used Piwik/Matomo in the past, and while I'm not a massive fan of the code-quality of that project, it's at least auditable (and editable).

- You say you're transparent about what you collect—IPs aren't mentioned on that page[0]. Are IPs stored in full or how are they handled? I assume you log IPs?

- How do you discern unique page-views? You seem to be dogfooding and I see no cookies or localStorage keys set.

[0] https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect

>>lucide+l2
- No plans to go open source with the backend, but I do show the code that is run in the browser. The visualisation of the data is not super important I think. - I don't save IP's, not even in the logs. - I don't have unique pageviews at the moment. I will in the future. If the referrer is the same as the current page, I will measure that as a non-unique. What do you think?

>>harian+53
Have you considered using a shared-source license where they can inspect and build from source that they have to pay for? And where people can obtain the source freely for academic research and/or security reviews?

Shared-source proprietary goes as far back as Burroughs B5000 mainframe whose customers got the source and could send in fixes/updates. Microsoft has a Shared Source program. Quite a few suppliers in embedded do it. There's also a company that sells UI software which gives the source to customers buying higher-priced version.

I will warn that people might still rip off and use your code. Given it's JavaScript, I think they can do that anyway with reverse engineering. It also sounds like they could build it themselves anyway. Like most software bootstrappers or startups, you're already in a race with other players that might copy you with clean slate implementations. So, I don't know if the risk is that big a deal or not. I figured I should mention it for fairness.