Re: Telemetry on by default kitty

[Leo Prikler <leo.prikler@student.tugraz.at>]

Am Sonntag, den 13.06.2021, 13:57 -0400 schrieb Leo Famulari:
> On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 11:32:01AM +0200, Leo Prikler wrote:
> > Of course, there's the added bonus of the lead developer
> > expressing their views in a… rather aggressive tone to put it
> > mildly,
> > but that's a social problem.
> 
> To be fair to the author, the bug report described a simple update
> notifier as "surveillance" and said that Goyal is contributing "to
> the
> normalization of surveillance in GNU/Linux software."
> 
> Those are opinions, not facts.
Point taken, that too is a social problem.  The fact, that the patch in
question was like one line, does not help either.

> The bug reporter's social skills were also quite poor; you don't
> begin
> to ask for something by using pejorative terms and accusing people of
> doing something nefarious. It is insulting.
I read that in a somewhat different way, but I do agree with your
statement.

> Because Kitty has an automatic update notifier built-in, it's obvious
> that Kitty is intended to be distributed outside of the old-school
> GNU/Linux distro model, and that means that automatic updates are
> expected and valuable. Distros like Guix are the entities who are
> doing something weird in this scenario.
I see the same. Much software has built its own update channels,
because the ones supported by mainstream distros typically don't cut
it.  It's even worse if you want to supply other platforms as well. 
Even Emacs has its own package repo :P

> Not to mention that telemetry about crashes and usage are extremely
> valuable for developers. The free software community's resistance to
> that kind of automated feedback is an important factor in the overall
> low quality of free software relative to other non-free operating
> systems, in my opinion. There are many reasons that "the masses"
> choose
> not to use GNU/Linux despite extremely widespread popular
> dissatisfaction with "big tech", and low quality and poor integration
> is
> a big one, in my experience.
Perhaps it's valuable for developers, but as a user I often have next
to no information about what data gets collected and for which purpose,
both of which are important for *informed consent*.  If "the masses"
don't really care about the data being collected and would rather see
improvements on their software, they are free to enable telemetry –
that's what opt-in is for – but my personal opinion on this is that
you're going to have a hard time convincing people, that you actually
only collect reasonable amounts and use them with respect for privacy
rights.

Regards,
Leo