However, we also want to ensure that the data we collect is meaningful, so 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.) This is to ensure the system is opt-out, not opt-in. This is essential because we know that opt-in metrics are not very useful. Few users would opt in, and these users would not be representative of Fedora users as a whole. We are not interested in opt-in metrics.
Essentially they’re playing with words to say it’s opt in but if you just click Next like most users will do, it’ll be enabled. The developer openly admits few users would opt in and complains that it wouldn’t be useful.
That’s lip service to privacy with spyware in reality.
I think you mixed up opt out and opt in in the title
Metrics can be very valuable, the people who really care can just uncheck the box as part of the initial installation. I regularly submit crash reports which contain far more personal information. I think this is a good move.
Do you know how this will affect existing installations? Is this gnome only or any desktop?
States the gnome-initial-setup. KDE is big on telemetry only being opt-in, so it seems like just the gnome environment. Or at least I hope I’m right…
It won’t affect existing installations, definitely won’t. You may get a “Welcome Screen” on a new GNOME update that enables it if you just click next.
No idea about KDE, Fedora higher ups don’t care about it but KDE does have support for Welcome Screens, they’ll likely use that if they can.
But this is merely for the moment, you’ve seen how Red Hat has treated CentOS, they’re carefully calculating each move, justifying each mistake, if this passes through they’ll eventually shamelessly switch to opt-out telemetry.
I’m almost certain that is not conform with GDPR in europe to pre-enable checkboxes.
I’m no lawyer but I read it that way and will probably be disappointed.
If it collects user data it is not. If it collects “1 person downloaded an update” it’s perfectly fine
I agree, but whatever they say … who do I trust? I’m paranoid enough to trust only my own network capture.
If only it was open source. Or if only you could actually do your own network capture. 🤷
That’s not what the GDPR is for though.
Though I’m curious how does teletry work in a GNU/Linux system? Is there some daemon like ‘telemetryd’ that watches /var/log or something…?
On Endless OS, applications use a D-Bus API (via a small C library, eos-metrics) to record metrics events locally on the device. This API is implemented by a system-wide service, named eos-metrics-event-recorder or eos-event-recorder-daemon (no, I don’t know why it has two different names either), which buffers those events in memory, and periodically submits them anonymously to a server, Azafea, which ingests them into a PostgreSQL database (after a short layover in a Redis queue). If the computer is offline – often the case for Endless OS systems! – events are persisted to a size-limited ring buffer on disk, and submitted when the computer is online.
From https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2023/07/05/endless-oss-privacy-preserving-metrics-system/
Fedora says they intend to deploy endlessOS’s metric system
but if you just click Next like most users will do, it’ll be enabled
That’s the definition of opt-out, so they’re telling the truth :) Opt-out is the worse alternative when it comes to unwanted features, opt-in would have been better.
It’s still a proposal if you have more to say about opt-in/opt-out specifically they made a new thread to discuss it here
Opt-out helps you capture the group of users that simply do not care about telemetry.
As someone who recently started developing an open-source GUI application for a few thousand users I cannot stress enough how instrumental telemetry has been in fixing a variety of crashes.
red hat, what are you doing
P R O F I T
I’m happier than ever that I moved to a different distro. I was a Fedora user since they started and was happy to use it for a few years at the job. But seeing what’s happening with the whole red hat shit it makes me sad for the people who gave a lot of their time and passion for this.
It’s getting harder and harder for the Fedora devs to show they are independent of red hat…
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.
Looks like this statement contradicts with their goal.
How, exactly? They’ve been saying from the very beginning that they don’t need or want personally-identifiable data.
Opt-in = Low value metrics
Opt-out = Better metrics
If I read that right, looks like Fedora is justifying application of opt-out metrics as long as there’s little/no PII present in the data collected.
