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.
Quoting: omeganebulaQuoting: 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.
I actually did mention that it looks like it MAY NOT happen (comment #9 in this thread). The developers however appear to really want it and the user poll isn't as overwhelming as I'd like it to be.
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/unofficial-poll-about-opt-out-metrics-proposal/85494
AFAIK it's still up in the air and could easily get approved. I've also stated I'm happy with the compromise (no default, user must choose).
dziadulewicz Jul 10, 2023
Quoting: m2mg2```
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.
No. "Linux" will never be like Windows. It is not locked down, choices many. Things are, what's the key here, OPEN. Linux user can always choose whatever one wants. There is always an offering to no matter what that desire or requirement is. The user (not the used) can decide all and everything and the standards are pretty much sane on any popular distro.
Linux can NEVER be "like Windows". But what Linux truly can be sooner than later: a de facto standard in all of computing. Lies, prison cells and abuse will never fly in the long run. It's the true freedom that people desire consciously -or subconsciously.
Last edited by dziadulewicz on 10 July 2023 at 11:33 am UTC
Arehandoro Jul 10, 2023
omeganebula Jul 10, 2023
Quoting: ArehandoroWithout entering the discussion about IBM, which I'd love but not here, would someone be able to tell me how independent is the fedora project from Red Hat? I know most of the engineers work for them, but being a community project, how much power do these have over future decisions?
It is primarily up to you to decide this. The highest governing body is the Fedora Council, which includes 3 positions reserved for Red Hat out of the total 7, one of which is the Fedora Project Leader. Ultimately, it is the Fedora Council that decides who can fill these positions. The Council can only make decisions based on consensus.
The other important organisational unit is the FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee). It consists of 10 members who are elected by the community. FESCo is responsible for the technical leadership of Fedora and also makes decisions based on consensus. The FESCo will ultimately vote on this proposal, taking into account the broader community's opinion.
Currently, 9 out of 10 FESCo members and 6 out of 7 Council members are Red Hat employees. There have never been conflicts between the Red Hat and non-Red Hat parts of the community, so it is difficult to determine what would happen in the event of a significant dispute or disagreement. There have been cases, such as favouring Btrfs, where there was a difference between the Fedora Project and Red Hat as a company, but there was never any major drama; the collaboration has always been quite peaceful.
Jul 10, 2023
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: 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.
Agree to 99%, the only exception is that BSD code have been and are continuing to be closed off. The old classic example is WINSOCKS (aka the IP-stack in Windows), more modern versions are various firewall and router manufacturers that use some closed off BSD plus internal patches to drive their stuff and AFAIK ps4/ps5 is also closed off BSDs. So it does happen, now re Red Hat I'm 100% with you, they would most likely never do that.
Quoting: m2mg2I see. And I agree. Thanks for explaining what I didn't take the time to read in detail originally. At least I read your explanation.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
Quoting: poiuzHuh: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.
https://linuxiac.com/gnome-info-collect-telemetry-data-collection-tool/
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