This poll is a bit hard to understand but essentially you could vote for multiple options, the highest opt-out option is at 26%, meaning 74% of people oppose this idea.
The original proposal is at 16%, for a jarring 84% disapproval rate.
Despite overwhelming negative feedback, Red Hat is currently drafting a revised proposal.
These parts are all interesting and contradict some people who argue Red Hat has no hand in this issue:
Name: Michael Catanzaro
Email: <mcatanzaro@redhat.com>
and
The Red Hat Display Systems Team (which develops the desktop) proposes to enable limited data collection of anonymous Fedora Workstation usage metrics.
and
It is Fedora Legal's obligation to ensure our data collection complies with legal requirements in the jurisdictions in which Red Hat operates
and
Occasionally, Red Hat might need to collect specific metrics to justify additional time spent on contributing to Fedora or additional investment in Fedora.
The quotes above were handpicked. There are 7 matches for "Red Hat" in the link above, not counting the email address.
There is no way of collecting telemetry while respecting privacy*.
You can, anonymization and gathering data in aggregate, if implemented well, can ensure data can't be attributed to any one person. Who owns the data is a separate issue that you're conflating into privacy.
I get your perspective, but opt-in really isn't a great solution in terms of dataset. That's just the reality of it. Opt-in is super self-selecting and you get data that's basically an echo chamber of people who actually care enough about your product to contribute data. Being in an echo chamber doesn't make a great product.
No, you cannot. Every single bit of data collected, completely unconnected to your identify, is a violation of the privacy of the user. Connecting it to a user is worse, but that's irrelevant. Literally zero data created by the user can ever be acceptable to collect without their explicit decision to give it to you.
It does not and cannot matter how much less useful it makes the data. Taking it completely unconnected to anyone is a breach of privacy in every case.
I think you're expanding the concept of privacy beyond what most people are concerned about. I think its great that you have such a hard line stance on privacy, but to be honest from a practical standpoint, it's total overkill.
That's what privacy is. It's not getting spied on by programs on your computer phoning home.
If you collect any data whatsoever that isn't strictly opt in, you do not respect the privacy of your users. That's a tautology. There's no way around it. You have a right to nothing.
I mean sure, you can be dramatic and compare it to spying programs, or you can consider it like your average government census that prioritizes government programs to your benefit, except in this case its collecting WAY less data and it isn't even attributed to you in any way.
Honestly, I think its fine you think that way, but you have to realize its a bit like living in a cave, completely disconnected from everybody. Not everyone thinks that Linux should go that route.