Linux

Jesus bellydancing Christ people, read beyond the title of the post for once. This is good.

This will enable results that aren't biased by the few users who find the option to opt-in (when it's not presented front and center) or actively answer to surveys.

They are taking as much care as possible with their words to make it clear that THEY DO NOT WANT TO TRACK YOU OR ABUSE YOUR DATA, it's just what's necessary for studies to better understand the users' needs.

• You will have the chance to disable it front and center during the setup process;
• No data will be sent before an active confirmation from the user during the setup process;
• You will be able to fetch the data at any point to check what's being collected
• They are reaching out to the community for guidance on what type of data we find acceptable or not
• You can have an active participation on the building of this tool

And specially this, for the OH GOD, ITS THE END OF THE LINOX DESKTOP among you:

IT'S A PROPOSAL, IT'S NOT BEING ACTIVELY DEVELOPED YET!

Not only there's no reason to overreact, this could be the start of something beautiful for the Linux desktop, where the users not only actively participate but actively control their data

Telemetry should be opt-in, not opt-out.

why? just don't ruin my beloved fedora please, if telemetry exists it should be opt in, not opt out

Usage data is important for developers to know how people use their software, so I'm okay with it. But given Red Hat's recent direction, I'm not sure I trust them to slowly increase the data being collected.

But I don't use Fedora and I've already moved off Red Hat/CentOS, so I don't have a horse in this race ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Really? How am I supposed to trust these guys with my data, when they show me a pop-up like that? I guess that this data is anonymous only because otherwise the telemetry would need to be opt-out… oh wait, they explicitly said that:

That said, Fedora Legal has determined that if we collect any personally-identifiable data, the entire metrics system must be opt-in. Since we are only interested in opt-out metrics due to the low value of opt-in metrics, we must accordingly never collect any personally-identifiable data.

If this gets implemented, I’ll certainly be switching distros. That opt-out telemetry is even a serious proposal is potentially enough for me to switch, as it indicates where the Fedora team’s heads are. I’ve been using and recommending Fedora for over a decade, but this is crosses a line.

I'd think it should be opt in, but they're not even willing to entertain the idea of having neither selected and have the user choose on the basis they'd typically select to opt out. Perhaps that means you're in the wrong.

Telemetry should not exist in the first place. If it exists, it should completely be opt-in and self-contained in one single package that is not installed by default.

Everything else is hostile.

For as long as there are other distros to use, it will always be opt-in; shame, I liked Fedora.

Dammit. Just this year I settled on Fedora as my distro of choice. Back to Arch I guess. These fools are ruining Linux and I ain't happy about it.

gnome-initial-setup will default to displaying the toggle as enabled, even though the underlying setting will initially be disabled. (The underlying setting will not actually be enabled until the user finishes the privacy page, to ensure users have the opportunity to disable the setting before any data is uploaded.)

I see what they're saying here and how they're trying to give users options for users to opt-out before "accidentally" sharing data.

We are not interested in opt-in metrics. To make this a little more confusing, metrics collection is actually separate from uploading. Collection is always initially enabled, while uploading is always initially disabled. The graphical toggle enables or disables both at the same time.

Given all this I have even lower confidence that the opt-out will be bug free, especially over time. If the settings are separate then why just one toggle? If it were separate, I might want to collect then inspect the data and maybe even choose to share (or use the data myself some other way).

Few users would opt in...

Well yes, if it's all my way or the highway. I understand that this is a tough problem to solve and a tougher one to message correctly. Hopefully someone will figure it out one day.