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Remove the Gumroad API from Blender Analytics
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@BlenderDefender BlenderDefender released this 17 Jul 11:54
1.1.0
0c43806

This release removes the Gumroad API, which was implemented as an experiment for these features:

  • Granting benefits, if you donated.
  • Greeting you with an artist name.

This was an experiment, and the result was pretty clear:
The little benefits it has don't weigh out these costs:

  • More complicated to use (You first have to enter your license)
  • Slower Startup
  • Being bound to Gumroad (the Addon only works, if you get it from my Gumroad page)
  • Losing trust. For an Addon like Blender Analytics, which saves data about your Blender Usage to YOUR LOCAL DRIVE, it's absolutely important to be trustworthy, because even that is sensitive data. That's why I always put the path to where your data is into the descriptions of videos, where I promote Blender Analytics: %USERNAME%/Blender Addons Data\blender-analytics\data.json. This data stays on your local drive, but communicating with the Gumroad API might give the impression, that this data gets sent to some online storage. This was never the case and to underline that even further, removing the Gumroad API is really important.
  • Code Readability Problems.

Along with these reasons, the final reason was, that people got the "Artist Name"-Field wrong and put in random letters. The better solution for this feature is to use the computer username as Artist Name.

In conclusion, removing the Gumroad API is a step that benefits everyone. At the same time, multiple code cleanups and new comments lead to way better code readability, which is a base step for future development.

Greetings,
Blender Defender

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