The right thing is to make it opt-in for everyone, simple as that. The entire controversy goes away immediately if they do. If they really believe it's a good value proposition for their users, and want to avoid collecting data from people who didn't actually want to give it, they should have faith that their users will agree and affirmatively check the box.

If free users are really such a drain on them, why have they been offering a free version for so long before it became a conduit to that sweet, sweet data? Because it isn't a drain, it's a win-win. They want people using their IDE, even for free, they don't get money from it but they get market share, broad familiarity with their tool amongst software engineers, a larger user base that can support each other on third party sites and provide free advertising, and more.

[–] CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The right thing is to make it opt-in for everyone

How is that the right thing? I'm directly challenging this claim.

All I said was that free users cost them money, so it's reasonable for them to try to recover those costs. I never claimed that free users are a drain on them, so I won't even respond to the rest of your comment.

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Opt out means "we will be doing this, without permission, unless you tell us not to" and opt in means "if you give us permission we will do this." Codebases can contain important and sensitive information, and sending it off to some server to be shoved into an LLM is something that should be done with care. Getting affirmative consent is the bare minimum.

[–] CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I disagree about what the bare minimum is. It's not uninformed. They tell you about it, and tell you you can opt out. I don't really see how that would be them doing it without permission.

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Why isn't "it's informed and you can just opt out" good enough for paid users? They could've developed a single system instead of two if that's a sufficient standard of care for users' data.

[–] CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 22 hours ago

It is good enough. I wouldn't have cared if they did make paid users opt out. I think it's a courtesy to their paid users, not an attack on their free users, that they allow paid users to opt in instead of opting out.

Also, there's no way they developed a whole separate system for this. It's likely a single line boolean check.