Not only that, they ask for your work email address. I'm only using InfluxDB for my home dashboard (raspi, some sensors, etc.) so I just went with "[email protected]" instead.

It's OK; their email validation is borked (just put in anything matching `\w@\w`, no domain necessary) and give something random for the name. Modals like that are pretty standard practice for enterprise mumbo jumbo; they only need to catch someone foolish enough to put in real data once to be worthwhile.

Arguably, that's as correct a way as any for validation for email.

http://www.regular-expressions.info/email.html

> Don't go overboard in trying to eliminate invalid email addresses with your regular expression. The reason is that you don't really know whether an address is valid until you try to send an email to it. And even that might not be enough.

I find it even more sad when in the meantime, the button named "Learn more" on the same page doesn't link to a valid page (as https://www.influxdata.com/pricing leads to a 404).

To improve the "conversion", it would be a way better way to fix that link instead of forcing me to use the Web Inspector to remove a rude modal dialog…

That should be getting changed to have a dismiss x on the upper right. TBH I thought it had been done already. Overly aggressive marketing department...

Are you blaming your own marketing team? Take responsibility.

Granted, they don't have a link to the GitHub page on the blog post itself, but it's open source software.

https://github.com/influxdata/influxdb/releases

Yes, it's annoying.

But honestly, if a person won't share contact information in exchange for the fruits of thousands of hours of someone's labor then they don't have much of a need for it and the creators probably aren't missing them.

And what is wrong with it? Honestly curious.

I understand the tradeoff between them giving me free software and me giving them my contact information—the way they've done it is just so up front and in your face!

I'm pretty sure there is a web dev or user experience best practice about not spamming your users with "subscribe to us" and "like us on Facebook" dialogs immediately when they land on your page. And this one can't even be dismissed unless you subscribe!

This is what I usually use sites like http://10minutemail.com for.

Or in this specific case, just enter garbage in the form.

As far as I'm concerned I shouldn't have to give up my contact details in order to download FOSS software.

Thankfully in this case I can just go build the thing myself but these kind of sign up walls without a way to opt out of them do annoy me.

Yes, you could build the thing yourself.

I'm all for protecting privacy, but, Don't you think it is reasonable for a FOSS project/company to collect basic stats on their audience? They aren't even forcing you to give up your identity. Just an email address, which could be something that don't particularly identify you, while they get unique user stats. You could obviously mark them as Spam, if they do end up spamming you..

Whenever I see 'valid work email address' on a form I assume I'm going to get harassed by sales people.

Definitely what influx does. I feel like I get an email from them at least every week.

I have no issue with them collecting basic stats. I'm contributing to the statistics Homebrew collects and when Django gets their statistics I will keep them enabled or opt-in.

However, I should be allowed to opt out. I also don't consider my (work) email address to be meaningful data they can use to improve the quality of their software or gain an understanding of how it's being used. At best I can see them deduping download counts through it which can be done in other ways.

"Don't you think it is reasonable for a FOSS project/company to collect basic stats on their audience?"

No. That is not free, that is paying for it with your privacy.

Wow. What a deal breaker. I'm not giving you my information just to try something I don't even know if I like. This is software. It's not like test driving a car where it could cost you money if I stole it.