I also find this upsetting, although maybe not for the exact same reason.
Fedora is a big, collaborative project. We try new things. We don’t always agree on how, but we’re working together to a common goal — a world where everyone benefits from free and open source software built by inclusive, welcoming, and open-minded communities. We do this by building an operating system and making it easy for others to do things with and build on that OS.
Many people have strong opinions about privacy, and some loud voices are presenting that as all-or-nothing — but “all or nothing” has never been the Fedora way. Freedom is a core principle — but so are Features and First. Most crucially, we’re Friends working together to do all this. Friendship doesn’t mean we all think the same, and it has to be safe to propose things that others might disagree with.
Some folks are arguing that privacy-respecting collection of non-personally-identifiable information is completely impossible. I don’t think that’s an invalid position, but it is an extreme one.[1] Clearly a lot of people don’t like the idea of “opt-out”[2], but a lot of people are taking that to mean “no choice given”. Some folks are not reading the proposal carefully, or just assuming deception. Others take the position that presenting an option with a bias towards yes (like, having the box pre-checked) is morally equivalent to not presenting an option at all. That’s an absolutist take — and I don’t think it’s a mainstream one.[3] It’s more complicated than that.
We need to be able to discuss complicated topics. Because we are Fedora and this is the way we do everything, we want to have these discussions in the open. For that to work, people need to participate in good faith, listen to others, and assume that the folks working on proposals also have Fedora’s best interest in mind.
If simply having such a conversation means “damage is already done”, then I don’t know what to do. So, yeah, I’m upset too.
See this post from Cassidy James Blaede, plus various posts in Approaches to data handling, safety, and avoiding individual identification — a breakout topic for the F40 Change Request on Privacy-preserving telemetry for Fedora Workstation] ↩︎
Again see Cassidy’s post, and of course Opt-in / Opt-Out? A breakout topic for the F40 Change Request on Privacy-preserving telemetry for Fedora Workstation ↩︎
I keep bringing up Ubuntu. Sure, we can have a higher standard — but, I don’t think it’s at all reasonable to argue that Ubuntu or Canonical are malicious. C’mon. Even Kantian deontologistism is more forgiving. ↩︎