I am assuming this has been going for a long time. Questions:

• What kind of privacy issues does it create.
• In case AWS goes down, how much functionality do we lose ?

In T110484#1579327, @akosiaris wrote:

I am assuming this has been going for a long time. Questions:

• What kind of privacy issues does it create.

Exposes user IPs I guess? Also possibly against our privacy policy (if it applies to grafana.wikimedia.org?!) since it doesn't ask for user consent before contacting AWS.

It violates our privacy policy for *.wikimedia.org domains, afaik (IANAL).

In T110484#1579327, @akosiaris wrote:

I am assuming this has been going for a long time. Questions:

• What kind of privacy issues does it create.

As above, Privacy Policy violation since it's a *.wikimedia.org domain (IANAL)

• In case AWS goes down, how much functionality do we lose ?

Nothing, as the call to AWS doesn't provide any functionality, afaict. It simply GETs https://grafanarel.s3.amazonaws.com/latest.json to see what the latest version is, presumably to complain/suggest upgrading. I want to just remove that call all together....

Stating your question in the reverse: What do we gain from calling out to AWS?
Answering my new question: Nothing, and thus we shouldn't do it.

In T110484#1595047, @greg wrote:

It simply GETs https://grafanarel.s3.amazonaws.com/latest.json to see what the latest version is, presumably to complain/suggest upgrading.

Or as a smart way tracking of install base/usage.

Nothing, as the call to AWS doesn't provide any functionality, afaict. It simply GETs https://grafanarel.s3.amazonaws.com/latest.json to see what the latest version is, presumably to complain/suggest upgrading. I want to just remove that call all together....

Stating your question in the reverse: What do we gain from calling out to AWS?
Answering my new question: Nothing, and thus we shouldn't do it.

Agreed. I am anyway trying to get involved with Grafana these days, I 'll coordinate with @ori, having in mind a possible upgrade to a newer version of grafana anyways and perhaps patching our installation with a removal of that check.

FWIW see also T104738: Upgrade to Grafana v2.x for a related discussion on the upgrade, I don't see a way to disable this via config at least in our version in trebuchet :|

In T110484#1596556, @fgiunchedi wrote:

I don't see a way to disable this via config at least in our version in trebuchet :|

Yeah, I spent way too long yesterday poking around config files/puppet/upstream docs looking for a way to disable it, unfortunately.

In T110484#1597044, @greg wrote:

In T110484#1596556, @fgiunchedi wrote:

I don't see a way to disable this via config at least in our version in trebuchet :|

Yeah, I spent way too long yesterday poking around config files/puppet/upstream docs looking for a way to disable it, unfortunately.

Yeah, I was referring to removing it, not disabling it. As in our local patch. Looking into master

https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/master/public/app/directives/grafanaVersionCheck.js

it could be patched with a null function, me thinks. But if we are going to upgrade, it probably does not make sense to do it for this version alone.