The signature test isn't exactly phoning home, but it isn't letting the user choose to whether to allow the test to connect to some website. This is always bad. The Module::Build signature test contains 
skip_test("Skipping unless \$ENV{TEST_SIGNATURE} is true") unless $ENV
+{TEST_SIGNATURE};

[download]
which is the way it should be done. libwww-perl's Makefile.PL opens a socket to google.com (as a way of detecting a live connection), and if successful, prompts the user to run some tests that tries to access some sites , which while not ideal, is better than blindly connecting to whatever server to do anything without letting the user choose.

The user should always be prompted, and the default should always be to not connect, even if the entire purpose of a distribution is to interface to a specific remote server (like WWW-Yahoo-Groups ...).

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

In reply to Re: How to create/generate META.yml and SIGNATURE files for CPAN by PodMaster
in thread How to create/generate META.yml and SIGNATURE files for CPAN by stvn

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.