RE: Emacs project mission (was Re: "If you're still seeing problems, please reopen." [

[Drew Adams]

> > The "Recent messages" bit in the bug reports is a bomb just waiting
> > to blow up.  At some point somebody will be doing some mining of the bug
> > repo for "interesting" messages and do a write-up of how horribly lax
> > the GNU project it with people's privacy.
> 
> I agree.  We should not automatically include potentially sensitive
> user data in bug reports.  We can ask for it in the (presumably rare)
> cases when we do need to see those messages.
> 
> How about the attached patch?

It's not just about "Recent messages".  It's about
anything we automatically insert into the report,
which a user might not pay attention to, or even if
she does, which she might not want to send.

Let users decide.  A simple option takes care of
this.  And separating the parts of the code that
insert each different part of the automatic info
means that we can also give users commands to
insert any of them as one-offs, to override their
chosen default preferred behavior.

I see no reason why we wouldn't want to let users
decide, in this regard - whether it's about privacy
or any other reason a user might have for her
preference.

What's the difficulty or downside to doing this?