Starting in Fedora Workstation 40. Source: https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/10/fedora_privacy_telemetry/?td=rt-3a There is already colorful discussion taking place on the Ask Fedora community forum. For me, the primary issue is that while they're clearly trying to find a balance between much needed user data and privacy, they're already being a little hard headed in their proposal by insisting that they don't want OPT-IN participation, because they consider it "garbage" data. Instead, they want OPT-OUT, which means you have to choose "No" when the dialogue pops up regarding whether or not you are allowing them to have access to your data. Moreso, right now the idea is that the system would collect data immediately, but not send that data if you say no, which means it's still collecting data. I don't know, with the recent Red Hat closed source fiasco (whatever you believe, well intended or not, it still became a fiasco), introducing this proposal right now is just all around bad timing, and despite the fact that this is still in the proposal stage, where things can change, the primary contributor, Michael Catanzaro, the head of the Red Hat Displays Team, seems to be pushing the notion that this is already going to happen. Granted, it might not happen, but clearly a lot of behind the scenes work has gone into preparing this as something that's going to take place. I sincerely hope it does not. As a staunch privacy advocate, I am a firm believer in privacy as a human right, and this idea that something can be bulk data collection, and somehow privacy preserving, just doesn't exist.
I don't fully understand this, but it seems to me that if your product is a Linux distribution, you need to accept that your customer base is made up entirely of people who don't care all that much about convenience, and DO care a lot about maintaining control over their computing environment and their data -- because if both of those things weren't true, they wouldn't be using Linux in the first place -- and act accordingly. In other words, as useful as it would be to have more data, the nature of their product dictates that it ain't gonna happen.
Indeed. What seems to be bothering most people, at least in the Ask Fedora threads dealing with the proposal, is that the engineer pushing for it wants to make it OPT-OUT rather than OPT-IN. So you get the creation of dark patterns, and the kind of bullshit that Microsoft pulls, as do most sleazy corporations. It also makes it seem like the push is for people to not realize they're unknowingly opting in to data collection, because every time it's brought up that the system, if it's going to use basic telemetry for improving Fedora, should use opt-in, the people involved in proposing the new system reject it. In essence, they're saying that if they make it opt-in, people will realize they're not allowing Fedora to collect data, and they don't want that to happen. Opt-In is true to FOSS, it lets you make the choice, but assumes you want to protect your privacy. Opting Out is the same thing that Ubuntu started doing when they were selling search data to Amazon back in 2012. So yeah, a lot of people are sensitive about this possible change. It's still in the proposal stage, though, so we'll have to see how far it gets. It's not that people generally don't trust Fedora, they do, but Fedora is a part of Red Hat, and Red Hat is owned by IBM, and in the open source community, IBM's a four letter word.
Well, IBM bought Red Hat who owns Fedora. Fedora is upstream of Red Hat, so RHEL developments happen there, and pass downstream to Red Hat, which are also shared to CentOS stream (also owned by Red Hat). Recently, Red Hat got in hot water for changing their RHEL code to closed source, which put Alma and Rocky Linux, two bug for bug distros, in a bind because they were pulling from those RHEL sources to keep Alma and Rocky up to date. So on the heels of that come this latest push, and it's clearly Red Hat who wants this push for Fedora. I have said elsewhere that Fedora has its own steering committee, and they can vote down any changes Red Hat wants to make, but only to a point. Red Hat owns them, so if they really piss Red Hat off enough, Red Hat can just take over, and if IBM thinks Red Hat should take over, they will. I don't trust IBM as far as I can throw them, so it's all a little discomforting when Fedora talks about telemetry knowing in the Linux world that telemetry is not trusted. After all, many of us come from the world of Microsoft and its obscene data collection and we know where "we just want a few statistics" can lead if the corporation that owns the software decides they want new ways to make money.
If you're looking for data privacy, being a US citizen, is an almost guarantee you aren't going to get any. Oddly enough, China has some of the strongest data privacy laws on the planet.
True, data collection is pervasive here. There are alternatives in the Linux community, and I can see people moving to them if Fedora goes through with this against the wishes of much of its user base.
I've not looked into this at all, don't know anything about Fedora. But, I can tell you that regardless of what is in the contract, they will have a shitload more money and lawyers to bring to court for any lawsuit against them. If this contract allows for personal data to be sold or used in anyway outside US law, and you have enough money and lawyers to fight them, you can. But, I'm not sure what that would be (anything outside US law) as I really don't think any US laws protect individual privacy. It's entirely up to the corporation with whom you are doing business. I mean ... Netflix is so fucking nosy they want to know what kind of movies I like. I guess I'm saying, it doesn't matter. your information will be "out there" regardless.
It's why privacy minded folks, especially Linux users, get antsy in the pantsy when any Linux distro maintainer starts talking telemetry, and we have IBM telling Red Hat telling Fedora that telemetry sure would be great to make the "product better." Data on the internet is forever. It never truly disappears.
Does anyone else feel like it's weird to hear the word "telemetry" in a non-space probe type context?
Sometimes I think they want to shoot themselves in the foot. Then again, this is under IBM's control, and we're talking the same people who lost the PC race despite being one of the most powerful PC companies in the world. Stupid, shortsighted decisions, and a "we know better than you" attitude. Nah, I deal with it often in IT. I think Microsoft has taken to calling it data collection or something.
We’re just used to that context. But “telemetry” just means performance and status data transmitted to a remote receiver.
