Quite a controversial topic currently floating around is that a change proposal has been made for Fedora Workstation 40 to have some "privacy-preserving" telemetry to "enable limited data collection of anonymous Fedora Workstation usage metrics".
This has generated quite the buzz across pretty much everywhere I look, with many people on both sides jumping in to argue about it. One thing to remember though, is that this is a proposal, nothing has been set in stone and the whole idea could be scrapped or changed a lot as discussions go on.
In summary:
Fedora is an open source community project, and nobody is interested in violating user privacy. We do not want to collect data about individual users. We want to collect only aggregate usage metrics that are actually needed to achieve specific Fedora improvement objectives, and no more. We understand that if we violate our users’ trust, then we won’t have many users left, so if metrics collection is approved, we will need to be very careful to roll this out in a way that respects our users at all times. (For example, we should not collect users’ search queries, because that would be creepy.).
We believe an open source community can ethically collect limited aggregate data on how its software is used without involving big data companies or building creepy tracking profiles that are not in the best interests of users. Users will have the option to disable data upload before any data is sent for the first time. Our service will be operated by Fedora on Fedora infrastructure, and will not depend on Google Analytics or any other controversial third-party services. And in contrast to proprietary software operating systems, you can redirect the data collection to your own private metrics server instead of Fedora’s to see precisely what data is being collected from you, because the server components are open source too.
As for what they might actually be collecting there's all sorts but they're not yet being exactly clear on what, because approval for it hasn't happened as it's early days for the proposal. If they do get approval, it seems then they will work out a clear idea of what to collect. They did suggest some of it may be things like what IDEs are popular, the click-through rate of recommended banners in GNOME Software, what panels are most used in gnome-control-center, what type of hard drive you have, count how many users use a particular locale so they can optimize language support and so on.
Telemetry is not actually a bad thing but the way it has been used in the past is what gives it a bad name. Some companies absolutely abused data collection in the past, and plenty still do. There are ways to do it properly though which they seem to be trying to do by fully informing people here.
What's a little confusing though is their part about opt-in versus opt-out. The way it has been explained could have been better. It seems they want to go for opt-out, with it turned on to collect the data by default but not actually upload anything until you've gone through a privacy page when installing Fedora to confirm it. Disabling it will then send them nothing but it will still collect it locally ready for if you turn it on later. For existing users upgrading, it will be opt-in though, as they don't currently have a mechanism for getting user consent through upgrades. This opt-in / opt-out also has it's own discussion area since it's a big thing.
How do you feel about this idea? Let me know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: m2mg2I thought I read somewhere that due to its licensing, the FreeBSD kernel could integrate some non-free code, but I may be mistaken...Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2They still prefer the BSD licence, so I don't see how it is any different from other BSDs in that respect (maybe you can educate me on that subject, I am not that well aware of the differences in the BSD ecosystem)Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2I don't understand why you think people wanting more freedom will go to an OS which is more closed-source friendly, but why not...
"Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Windows, IOS, Android, etc. already are collecting this type of data by default."
This quote is from the opt-in opt-out thread. People want Linux to be just like Windows. We use it because it's not Windows. Please, don't make it Windows. Then those of us that care about what Linux is/was, will have to go to BSD.... and we will. Not that the ones who take it over will care.
OpenBSD is not closed source friendly.
My understanding of the BSD license and I'm no expert either is that is even freer than GPL. GPL has restrictions on how you can use the code. BSD is basically do whatever you want with it. These are license issues and have nothing to do with operating system functionality, how free it is or how respectful of it's users it is.
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Quoting: m2mg2Reading the paragraph about Research Limitations, we can observe that's a far cry from the idea of hidden/forced telemetry. But that's been put to use indeed.Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2I am fine with different people having different tastesQuoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2Well I am not using Linux just because of privacy, but also for technical reasons, so that's a different case altogether.Quoting: omer666I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.
Can you name anything that improved leaps and bounds after starting to collect telemetry? Gnome does telemetry but they continuously ignore the obvious will of users to do what they want instead. It's less about needing telemetry and more about following the industry trends of collecting data and IGNORING what users want in favor of what developers and platform owners want. The proponents of this over and over acknowledge they can't make it opt-in because users wont opt-in. They can't force an explicit choice because the choice will be no and they know it. This right here says it all. They should just not do it. They are already ignoring users in favor of what they want, you think they are going to completely flip and suddenly start doing things in the interest of the users? Nonsense.
They also make the arguments that users don't care, also total nonsense. Telemetry has been getting forced on users for years against their will. They are so bombarded it would take unrealistic effort to stop it so they submit, effectively by force. Then you guys turn around and say they don't care. They have never been given a choice, except in Linux and now people are trying to take that choice away as well. If you want to collect it, make people want to give it to you. If you can't do that, don't take it. Don't trick them, take via it attrition (bombarding them until they make a mistake by accident) and dark patterns. Be better, be ethical.
I never heard of GNOME using telemetry, but I have a pretty unpopular opinion about how they've been handling user requests since GNOME 3.0... I am glad they haven't listened
Pretty sure it's opt in, unlike the current proposal but I don't use Gnome and I find Gnome 3 to be an abomination. https://gitlab.gnome.org/vstanek/gnome-info-collect/#fedora
Following the link you provided, it seems it's never been used and it's not even in the official repos of the distros quoted (apart from Arch)
https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2023/01/18/gnome-info-collect-what-we-learned/
Also in the same paragraph they explain how having such a limited and specific public opting in may have rendered the results quite irrelevant...
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Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2Reading the paragraph about Research Limitations, we can observe that's a far cry from the idea of hidden/forced telemetry. But that's been put to use indeed.Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2I am fine with different people having different tastesQuoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2Well I am not using Linux just because of privacy, but also for technical reasons, so that's a different case altogether.Quoting: omer666I think privacy advocacy may be going a little over the top on this subject. I'm all for it, I use a zero-access email provider, do my searches on Duckduckgo, have a LineageOS smartphone without Google services and so on, and yet I don't mind them collecting technical data. It's much less complete than Steam hardware survey and yet I'd bet every Linux gamer will gladly answer this one because they want to improve the system's visibility for game developers. Here the devs want to improve the system, but nope, no sir, this is bad and all.
Can you name anything that improved leaps and bounds after starting to collect telemetry? Gnome does telemetry but they continuously ignore the obvious will of users to do what they want instead. It's less about needing telemetry and more about following the industry trends of collecting data and IGNORING what users want in favor of what developers and platform owners want. The proponents of this over and over acknowledge they can't make it opt-in because users wont opt-in. They can't force an explicit choice because the choice will be no and they know it. This right here says it all. They should just not do it. They are already ignoring users in favor of what they want, you think they are going to completely flip and suddenly start doing things in the interest of the users? Nonsense.
They also make the arguments that users don't care, also total nonsense. Telemetry has been getting forced on users for years against their will. They are so bombarded it would take unrealistic effort to stop it so they submit, effectively by force. Then you guys turn around and say they don't care. They have never been given a choice, except in Linux and now people are trying to take that choice away as well. If you want to collect it, make people want to give it to you. If you can't do that, don't take it. Don't trick them, take via it attrition (bombarding them until they make a mistake by accident) and dark patterns. Be better, be ethical.
I never heard of GNOME using telemetry, but I have a pretty unpopular opinion about how they've been handling user requests since GNOME 3.0... I am glad they haven't listened
Pretty sure it's opt in, unlike the current proposal but I don't use Gnome and I find Gnome 3 to be an abomination. https://gitlab.gnome.org/vstanek/gnome-info-collect/#fedora
Following the link you provided, it seems it's never been used and it's not even in the official repos of the distros quoted (apart from Arch)
https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2023/01/18/gnome-info-collect-what-we-learned/
Also in the same paragraph they explain how having such a limited and specific public opting in may have rendered the results quite irrelevant...
Not irrelevant, just not what they want. But if you can't get what you want ethically, you probably need to re evaluate your wants or look harder for an ethical way to get it.
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Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2I thought I read somewhere that due to its licensing, the FreeBSD kernel could integrate some non-free code, but I may be mistaken...Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2They still prefer the BSD licence, so I don't see how it is any different from other BSDs in that respect (maybe you can educate me on that subject, I am not that well aware of the differences in the BSD ecosystem)Quoting: omer666Quoting: m2mg2I don't understand why you think people wanting more freedom will go to an OS which is more closed-source friendly, but why not...
"Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, Windows, IOS, Android, etc. already are collecting this type of data by default."
This quote is from the opt-in opt-out thread. People want Linux to be just like Windows. We use it because it's not Windows. Please, don't make it Windows. Then those of us that care about what Linux is/was, will have to go to BSD.... and we will. Not that the ones who take it over will care.
OpenBSD is not closed source friendly.
My understanding of the BSD license and I'm no expert either is that is even freer than GPL. GPL has restrictions on how you can use the code. BSD is basically do whatever you want with it. These are license issues and have nothing to do with operating system functionality, how free it is or how respectful of it's users it is.
That may or may not be, IDK. But even closed source code can be respectful of it's users. It just doesn't happen to be the norm. I like open source but I'm not completely anti closed source.
Last edited by m2mg2 on 9 July 2023 at 9:25 pm UTC
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If it's implemented similarly to the KDE wizard after a fresh installation, I think that's fine.
IBM and the Holocaust... I can't believe someone threw that into the conversation. Pretty much everyone involved is dead. Life goes on. What are you gonna do, boycott entire countries like Germany and Japan? Leaders made decisions that countries and companies followed, and those leaders are gone.
IBM and the Holocaust... I can't believe someone threw that into the conversation. Pretty much everyone involved is dead. Life goes on. What are you gonna do, boycott entire countries like Germany and Japan? Leaders made decisions that countries and companies followed, and those leaders are gone.
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omeganebula Jul 10, 2023
Quoting: slaapliedjeMy question is; after IBM's most recent FU to the open source community... is anyone still going to use Fedora, let alone want to give them any data?
Of course. Should I distrohop just because Red Hat sponsors Fedora among others? And then, what should I switch to? What else provides a seamless, leading edge vanilla experience like Fedora does? How many Red Hat-sponsored components can morally fit into a Linux distribution? Is Gentoo or Slackware acceptable? To answer your question, everyone will decide for themselves whether they want to switch from Fedora or whether they want telemetry. We are not the Borg with collective consciousness. If the community votes for the proposal and it becomes clear what data collection it involves, then I will make my decision. There is actually such a thing as ethical data collection, eg. Umami, Plausible or Matomo instead of Google Analytics on websites.
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Quoting: 14If it's implemented similarly to the KDE wizard after a fresh installation, I think that's fine.
IBM and the Holocaust... I can't believe someone threw that into the conversation. Pretty much everyone involved is dead. Life goes on. What are you gonna do, boycott entire countries like Germany and Japan? Leaders made decisions that countries and companies followed, and those leaders are gone.
Almost no one has a problem with them doing it like KDE, which means the user has to explicitly opt in. You cannot pre select it on and allow them to just press continue. They are proposing Windows/Ubuntu style telemetry, and went so far as to say in the proposal that they are not interested in opt-in telemetry at all. They are only interested in having it on by default and users having to pay enough attention to notice and decide to turn it off (opt-out).
They also state that if they ask the users, most will say no. But insist even though they would say no if asked, they actually don't care. So it's OK to default it on to avoid them saying no, and they argue that is ethical behavior. It's not
How can you acknowledge that you won't get agreement if you ask but argue that manipulating the interface to trick people into "accepting" (they aren't really accepting it) it is ethical? It's NOT ethical. Legal and ethical are not the same
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omeganebula Jul 10, 2023
Quoting: m2mg2Quoting: 14If it's implemented similarly to the KDE wizard after a fresh installation, I think that's fine.
IBM and the Holocaust... I can't believe someone threw that into the conversation. Pretty much everyone involved is dead. Life goes on. What are you gonna do, boycott entire countries like Germany and Japan? Leaders made decisions that countries and companies followed, and those leaders are gone.
Almost no one has a problem with them doing it like KDE, which means the user has to explicitly opt in. You cannot pre select it on and allow them to just press continue. They are proposing Windows/Ubuntu style telemetry, and went so far as to say in the proposal that they are not interested in opt-in telemetry at all. They are only interested in having it on by default and users having to pay enough attention to notice and decide to turn it off (opt-out).
They also state that if they ask the users, most will say no. But insist even though they would say no if asked, they actually don't care. So it's OK to default it on to avoid them saying no, and they argue that is ethical behavior. It's not
How can you acknowledge that you won't get agreement if you ask but argue that manipulating the interface to trick people into "accepting" (they aren't really accepting it) it is ethical? It's NOT ethical. Legal and ethical are not the same
You conveniently forget to mention that the proposal put forward by its proponents is practically unanimously rejected by the community. This is quite disrespectful on your part towards the Fedora community. Due to the rejection of the opt-out approach, there is even a consideration of simply withdrawing the proposal. Most likely, the "explicit choice" raised by Cassidy James and many others will ultimately be the compromise, meaning no default value will be provided.
Last edited by omeganebula on 10 July 2023 at 5:09 am UTC
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Quoting: poiuzAh, pet peeve pedantry: FUD is not, or at least was not originally, a catch-all expression meaning "anything negative said in the computing field". It means Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, and it is a strategy of making it look as if a thing is not viable, has poor future prospects, in an attempt at making people hesitate to adopt that thing, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and making the thing fail.Quoting: m2mg2Can you name anything that improved leaps and bounds after starting to collect telemetry? Gnome does telemetry but they continuously ignore the obvious will of users to do what they want instead.No, they're not. Stop spreading FUD.
So, the comment you're quoting is not FUD, it's just trash talking.
(I couldn't comment on the accuracy of that trash talk; I don't pay much attention to Gnome since Gnome 3, which wasn't to my taste--not saying it was bad, just not my thing, and I've found desktop environments that are, so I just don't follow it any more)
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 10 July 2023 at 5:54 am UTC
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Quoting: m2mg2My understanding of the BSD license and I'm no expert either is that is even freer than GPL. GPL has restrictions on how you can use the code. BSD is basically do whatever you want with it. These are license issues and have nothing to do with operating system functionality, how free it is or how respectful of it's users it is.Well, you might not call me an expert, but I have been following licensing controversies for a long time, so indulge me a moment.
In an odd technical sense, the BSD license is indeed "even freer" than the GPL. An analogy is, a state of law in which absolutely everything is permissible, is freer than a state of law in which everything is permissible except enslaving people. However, it does not feel freer to the slaves, only to those exercising their freedom by doing the enslaving.
So, leaving analogy, the distinction between the BSD license and the GPL is that the GPL insists that all derivative works stay GPL. The BSD license allows derivative works to be anything, including closed; people can basically relicense BSD works at will, including relicensing them as ordinary commercial software.
It is important to note that this has no impact on pre-existing versions. It's not like someone who holds the copyright on software they released as BSD can suddenly close all the copies everyone else already has--it's just the version they are continuing to develop that might now be closed. So, BSD software that someone starts developing closed versions of, can be forked and the fork could still be open--it could be BSD, or heck, you could fork a piece of BSD software and release that derivative version as GPL. Nobody ever does because it would be really rude, but you could.
So OK, what was someone saying about Red Hat and some stuff they do that apparently is BSD licensed? Yeah, if they're doing stuff and they have it BSD licensed they could totally close it, and if they're the main or only ones using and developing it, there probably wouldn't be a fork, and anyway if the main use case was in software they were distributing, then yeah, suddenly people would be getting some closed stuff in their Linux, and there would be nothing legal to stop that.
But it's not going to happen. I myself am very much pro-GPL and pro-Copyleft. But in practice, the BSD license has mostly been pretty stable, just because taking BSD licensed stuff proprietary is seen as, well, really rude. It's bad publicity and there isn't usually much benefit. There have been a few fairly high profile exceptions, but the spectre many (including me) feared in the early days, of BSD code turning out to be useless as Free Software because corporations would grab the nice open code and develop their own proprietary versions and get everyone to use that and effectively kill the open source version, just hasn't materialized. There are a number of reasons for this: Fork something and you have to maintain it, fork something and try to monetize it and you're competing with a free product that has a better reputation than you. And also, I think the BSD license benefits somewhat from the mere existence of the GPL--it's clear that if you go around messing with the Free Software that has permissive licenses, the open source aficionados will increasingly use stricter, more copyleft licenses and get more political, and the corps would rather just let the sleeping dogs lie and use the gravy train of good software they produce.
There is no way Red Hat is about to take any of their open source software closed; anyone saying so is either naive or deliberately alarmist. Slippery slope arguments are rarely sound.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 10 July 2023 at 6:02 am UTC
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