This poll is a bit hard to understand but essentially you could vote for multiple options, the highest opt-out option is at 26%, meaning 74% of people oppose this idea.
The original proposal is at 16%, for a jarring 84% disapproval rate.
Despite overwhelming negative feedback, Red Hat is currently drafting a revised proposal.
But what about Red Hat?
This is the link to the proposal: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Telemetry#Privacy-preserving_Telemetry_for_Fedora_Workstation
These parts are all interesting and contradict some people who argue Red Hat has no hand in this issue:
Name: Michael Catanzaro Email: <mcatanzaro@redhat.com>
and
The Red Hat Display Systems Team (which develops the desktop) proposes to enable limited data collection of anonymous Fedora Workstation usage metrics.
and
It is Fedora Legal’s obligation to ensure our data collection complies with legal requirements in the jurisdictions in which Red Hat operates
and
Occasionally, Red Hat might need to collect specific metrics to justify additional time spent on contributing to Fedora or additional investment in Fedora.
The quotes above were handpicked. There are 7 matches for “Red Hat” in the link above, not counting the email address.
The problem with opt-in is that it isn’t a good way to get a good sample size. It’s very self-selecting. There are ways of collecting telemetry while being privacy-respecting, but whether RedHat is properly anonymizing this user data is a different matter.
It doesn’t matter what the tradeoffs are. The data does not and cannot belong to you.
There is no way of collecting telemetry while respecting privacy*. The pure fact that you’re collecting anything the user didn’t explicitly consent to is an unacceptable violation. Anonymization doesn’t mean you aren’t taking data that isn’t yours.
*edit: without opt in. The acceptable way to do it is to make your ask, make the user make one choice or the other, and respect it.
You can, anonymization and gathering data in aggregate, if implemented well, can ensure data can’t be attributed to any one person. Who owns the data is a separate issue that you’re conflating into privacy.
I get your perspective, but opt-in really isn’t a great solution in terms of dataset. That’s just the reality of it. Opt-in is super self-selecting and you get data that’s basically an echo chamber of people who actually care enough about your product to contribute data. Being in an echo chamber doesn’t make a great product.
No, you cannot. Every single bit of data collected, completely unconnected to your identify, is a violation of the privacy of the user. Connecting it to a user is worse, but that’s irrelevant. Literally zero data created by the user can ever be acceptable to collect without their explicit decision to give it to you.
It does not and cannot matter how much less useful it makes the data. Taking it completely unconnected to anyone is a breach of privacy in every case.
I think you’re expanding the concept of privacy beyond what most people are concerned about. I think its great that you have such a hard line stance on privacy, but to be honest from a practical standpoint, it’s total overkill.
That’s what privacy is. It’s not getting spied on by programs on your computer phoning home.
If you collect any data whatsoever that isn’t strictly opt in, you do not respect the privacy of your users. That’s a tautology. There’s no way around it. You have a right to nothing.
I mean sure, you can be dramatic and compare it to spying programs, or you can consider it like your average government census that prioritizes government programs to your benefit, except in this case its collecting WAY less data and it isn’t even attributed to you in any way.
Honestly, I think its fine you think that way, but you have to realize its a bit like living in a cave, completely disconnected from everybody. Not everyone thinks that Linux should go that route.
If that is your stance, then there is literally zero privacy anymore. Zilch.
If I’m walking down the street and somebody marks that one person walked down the street, does that invade my privacy?
In that case, how does the concept of privacy even matter anymore? There is none, and there never will be.
The street a public space.
Your computer is not. If someone came into your home without permission and sent data back to some random company, you’d have them arrested.
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I don’t care. We don’t do deceptive dark patterns in FOSS.
sorry, mate, but this argument is flawed. First off, opt-in is the best way to get to the core of your sample size, because everyone that opts-in is someone that wants to help! Second, opt-in is the only sample size you should be “planning” around, because they’re the ones that use your product enough to want to help!
The only time you need opt-out (ie to include everyone by default) is if you are trying to sell data or want to be able to “determine” user behavior without focus groups, and honestly… I don’t think any of that is ok. There is a reason companies invest in focus groups… because it is focused!
Lastly, opt-in or opt-out isn’t really the heart of the issue, because in the end users can hopefully turn it off, for now, regardless of the default. The issue is seeing Red Hat flex their muscle over a community driven project. In my personal opinion, this is the first step to IBM taking over Fedora like they did Cent OS. Think about it, why are they trying to get this into Fedora? Because they don’t want to have to maintain it in patches on the side for Cent OS stream / RHEL. Not to mention, they know Fedora is a popular bleeding edge distribution for those that love and know CentOS / RHEL / Rocky / Alma.
Red Hat / IBM is trying to close the loop… mark my words. RHEL is their bread and butter and gone are the days of corporate trusting the upstream in the hands of a community. IBM wants to monetize every ounce of their ecosystem as possible. It has been 4 years to the month since IBM acquired Red Hat… it isn’t coincidence that CentOS and this is happening now. Most acquisitions of large companies have 5, 8, or 10 year contracts of “continuing business” as usual prior to the merge and then after that all individuality of the merged company / brand goes kaput.
That is already a biased group. I am sorry, but you can’t just cater your product to those who are super passionate about it. That’s a great way to enter into an echo chamber where valid criticisms are hidden behind enthusiasm. I mean, think about it, how many weird quirks of Linux are we, as enthusiasts, willing to put up with or don’t even recognize are issues for others?
You should not surround yourself with yes-men if you want to get constructive feedback.
To be honest, I feel like you’re letting the controversy of the past few weeks cloud your perspective. FOSS projects do need feedback regardless of whether they’re owned by a company or not.
Let me put it this way. I’m a linux software engineer with 20+ years of experience and my experience with open source projects is this: If you aren’t dedicated enough to fill out a bug report or help me help you with issues… I don’t want to know your situation. If that means you don’t use my software / solutions, fine… move on. The only time this is different is as I said, when a company wants to sell data or be able to mine for patterns that would help them monetize the product more.
Furthermore, I think you just don’t realize that Fedora has been doing fine for 20-ish years (?), and they haven’t needed this data previously; so why now? I don’t buy the, “it would help us focus on which packages to maintain” argument because that is what flatpak is suppose to help with by pushing the package maintenance back on the developers or a separate entity of maintainers. They don’t need to cater to simple users like new Linux converts because Fedora is simply not aligned with those principles! Fedora has always been Security and Free OSS focused because it makes for a great base for RHEL. Red Hat doesn’t need to strip out or worry about licensing issues because its done by Fedora; likewise, they don’t need to worry about security because its done by Fedora. They just have to make sure they don’t disrupt it… and thats why they want this telemetry in Fedora, same reason.
Which means you’re only listening to the people who are technically inclined. That’s a lot more siloed than you realize and leads to UX that really isn’t suitable for anything beyond the IT department. Maybe that’s your thing, but frankly, I’d like to see Linux expand beyond the datacenter and beyond the 2% of gamers.
Again, that’s siloed thinking. It’s perfectly fine…for the Linux space, but frankly I think every single distro genuinely needs more usability data because the UX really isn’t great in a lot of ways, and I say this as a Linux enthusiast of 15 years and a software dev myself. Doing fine is the status quo.
No, it means I’m only listening to people that want to help. There are plenty of bug reports filed by new to linux individuals all the time, but they need to make the first step of seeking help; after all, Linux engineers are often not paid for their contributions… this isn’t MS and Windows, or Canonical and Ubuntu.
Not siloed thinking at all, its the nature of the beast; its why open source / Linux in general has not dominated the desktop space, because there is no corporation behind it paying engineers to work on it to cater to those that don’t want to help. I’ve always said that open source / Linux’s greatest asset is its greatest weakness… and this is a prime example.
tought titties ¯_(ツ)_/¯