The Manjaro Linux team are asking for testers for their new data collection tool called "Manjaro Data Donor", which they plan to have as opt-out and not opt-in.
As expected, they are catching some comments from users not particularly happy about their plan to have it hooked up as something you have to opt out of due to privacy concerns. Telemetry is often a bad word to a lot of people, but the reality is that when done correctly it can be truly essential for projects to know where to focus.
Manjaro developer Roman Gilg said in the announcement that currently they use Matomo, which is pinged via the Network Manager but it's unreliable for various reasons. So they created Manjaro Data Donor (MDD) which gives more information and should be more reliable overall, and they actually have full control over it.
Currently they just want Manjaro users to test it and give feedback, but eventually it will be hooked up as a systemd service:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.In the next few days we’ll do some more testing and if results are positive, I plan on installing it on all Manjaro systems and adding a systemd service to submit the data automatically.
As a reminder: Right now you have to install MDD manually and there is no systemd service yet.
With this systemd service later in place, sending the hardware data with MDD will be opt-out because I believe, if you do opt-in, the data you gather will be so heavily skewed you can just leave it be.
Let me know what you think. I know telemetry is a contentious subject, but we need at least some data about how Manjaro is being used by so many people around the world in order to show that the project has a future and also to plan for that future.
rustigsmed about 2 hours ago
Spoiler, click me
pleasereadthemanual about 2 hours ago
Quote"Manjaro Data Donor", which they plan to have as opt-out and not opt-in.I think this is fine if they give you an undismissable prompt telling you they're going to do it and letting you opt out.
QuoteI know telemetry is a contentious subject, but we need at least some data about how Manjaro is being used by so many people around the world in order to show that the project has a future and also to plan for that future.I sympathise with the plight (even though it's Manjaro's plight), but I can't reconcile the morality of opt-out telemetry. If you do opt-out telemetry, you believe you are entitled to your user's data. Is there any scenario where that isn't true?
Another way of saying the same thing is:
QuoteIf we do opt-out telemetry, we'll snag a high percentage of people who don't even realize we're collecting data on them who would otherwise not consent to having their data collected if we made it opt-in. But this data is really important for us; more important than your consent.I can't reconcile it.
Last edited by pleasereadthemanual on 5 November 2024 at 10:51 am UTC
The problem is, anything short of informed and active consent is ethically (possibly, also legally in some parts of the world) a step on the road in the wrong direction, however much it may be paved with good intentions.
Imo, providing "free" (or, indeed any) software does not give devs the right to trample on this elementary principle, regardless of whether it concerns important usage statistics or something as small as a begging notification.
The second problem I see here is that I am getting sick to the core of telemetry-driven development. There are devs out there, including in major projects, that will take more time to argue that a certain modification did not result in a significant change of usage statistics than it took for a single-person fork project to implement an option to re-enable said feature.
Last edited by emphy on 5 November 2024 at 11:40 am UTC
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