Decision-Making, Governance, Council, Red Hat — a breakout topic for the F40 Change Request on Privacy-preserving telemetry for Fedora Workstation

Project Discussion Change Proposals
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41

The decision has not been made yet. This is the change proposal phase and it’s not just for show. You’ve already seen Miro (Red Hat employee) suggest he might vote against this proposal in FESCo, so you either know or should know that it’s not rigged. I don’t know whether this change will be approved or not.

Sad to see you go. This seems like an overreaction to me, but I knew we would likely lose users over this change proposal so I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising. I hope the data will be worth this…

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42

Certainly not (and without user profiles, there would be no market for it anyway).

What Christian meant was that we could use the data within Red Hat to encourage Red Hat to spend more on developing Fedora. I had believed that might be possible when I originally drafted the proposal. Nowadays, I’m more skeptical.

43

I wrote a decision has been made, I didn’t state or imply anything was “rigged”. I’ll give you another data point; one of the personal Fedora instances is likely to be replaced with Windows, albeit with telemetry officially disabled and its worth noting I haven’t run Windows on bare metal in a decade. If you think this is solely about “the data”, you’ve missed what I and others have tried to express in this thread.

44

You don’t have to apologize for voicing concerns here or pushing for us to respond. :slight_smile:

Fedora Legal is not signing off on particular metrics to be collected. They’re signing off on the general idea. Most importantly, they’re comfortable with the system being opt-out as long as none of the data can be tied to particular users or IP addresses. (I don’t think they’re concerned about scenarios where the servers get hacked or where Red Hat itself maliciously rigs up some method to associate IP addresses with the metrics data.)

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45

For what it’s worth, I’m actually ironically more optimistic that this can be the case. We can show with data how relatively small investments have huge community benefits.

46

Why should Red Hat need evidence that supporting Fedora is beneficial. Surely it is self-evident

47

I’m in complete support around how data backs up the great story Fedora has to tell in the open source community. I think we don’t take advantage of the trove of data we already have to show case how much good Fedora is doing on a daily basis - even celebrating ourselves here as contributors!

I would also add that Red Hat is driving it for the right reasons - reasons I would even myself add to this that knowing when a user is having a poor experience is an interesting thing to know. How can we improve the frustrated first time user’s experience when something goes wrong.

I think the problem I think is unclear is that the feeling of “is Red Hat suggesting and approving their own changes” is what is the alarm bell - and I personally don’t see that to be the case. I think the term “Red Hat Display Team” is probably the same as any company/team/organization that came in to offer support.

I am new to the Fedora contributor community - but I see a group of dedicated folks who are looking out for Fedora, even the ones who are also lucky to be able to work a few hours a week in open source at Red Hat’s expense.

For me as long as it’s transparent, consensus driven, and community driven, any decision is a Fedora decision. I think the only thing I would have changed in this process for how a change is requested is that it should be answering basic questions like the below right at the top and in big and bold:

  1. What is the value to Fedora as a whole from the change request? “Fedora would be better able to understand user experience problems in near-realtime”.
  2. What are the benefits to a typical (or a-typical) Fedora user? “Fedora users would have a faster time to resolution for bug/issues”
  3. How hard to implement, maintain, and retire this change? “It would require X months to build, community support to maintain, and a campaign to retire.”

To me the change that started this thread was written in a lot of cases talking as “Red Hat gets X, Y, Z” instead of “Fedora gets A, B, C” - because there is a lot of value to Fedora and that’s what should be the focus.

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48

It took me a little bit to get back to this, but I think this is actually true of all current Council members who are Red Hatters, except for David Cantrell — who started at Red Hat before Fedora existed, so that’s an unfair bar for him. :classic_smiley:

49

I wouldn’t normally bother with a post such as this, because really, who ultimately cares. However, since one of the themes of this topic is data points, I’ll write it anyway giving an unambiguous data point. The arrogance and the level of condescension towards users in the proposal and more so in some of the replies by different people here is far more troubling than the proposal itself. Perhaps it was always a bad assumption on my part, but I had believed the people involved with and behind Fedora had respect for the user. It’s clear at this point that assumption is either entirely inaccurate or at a bare minimum needs a series of asterisks.

I’d like to note that “The people involved with and behind Fedora”
are… everyone in the community. Anyone can submit a change proposal,
anyone can discuss it.

I agree there are some poor wording choices in a number of posts in this
thread/discussion, but I think the proposal authors are just proposing
what they feel will help them and fedora and users.

This isn’t a thread about solving any issues or how to make things better, it’s about a decision that has already been made and how can it be implemented without breaking things critically. The majority of the people in this thread pushing this proposal are Red Hat employees and I think it’s beyond cheeky that only one or two have had the presence of mind to be clear about that when posting.

Thats not the case. This is a proposed change. No decision has been
made.

You can read about the change process at

but at a high level:

  • anyone comes up with some idea or plan that will improve fedora
  • They write up the plan and submit it.
  • The entire community looks at it, provides feedback, makes
    suggestions on how to make it better, makes arguments for various
    changes or against the proposal entirely.
  • change submitters discuss those things, adjust their proposal, change
    things, etc
  • Only after at least a week, but in cases where discussion is still
    going on, longer does it go up for a FESCo discussion.
  • FESCo can and does: reject proposals, ask for more changes or
    discussion, approve or delay.

I’ve seen changes adjusted a great deal in discussion.
I’ve seen FESCo members change their minds on things based on
discussion.
I’ve seen proposals being dropped or being radically redone due to
discussion.

Nothing is set here, it’s up for discussion.

The submitters of this change are Red Had employees… but… they are a
part of our community too. (Disclaimer, I am also a Red Hat employee,
but I worked on Fedora for many many years before I joined Red Hat).

It was given as a reply to another poster, but I will take Michael Catanzaro’s advice and over the weekend discontinue all use of Fedora Linux.

Sorry to see you go, but of course do what you feel is best.

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50

It was clear in the proposal itself that Red Hat has a desire for metrics and based on some of the replies, I would say a strong desire for it. Maybe it was just one of the several flippant responses, but some of them seem to suggest if Fedora is unwilling they will seek to go through GNOME as there is a less formal change approval process. The decision I was referring to was Red Hat’s internal decision(s) that it desired metrics and was willing to lead an effort to implement them starting with putting forward this proposal presumably after internal discussion and review.

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51

So try to make the message clearer, you have a objective collect ANONYMOUS data, so maybe a dialog with short text will no do any good

change the title dialog to Telemetry (not Privacy), put text along the lines:

The Fedora Project needs to collect ANONYMOUS (Not User identifiable) data as example (link to list) about how the community uses the OS and know the community as a whole(how big is, what are the main apps, remember is the community not one a individual, so the Fedora Project can allocate resources, develop or optimize OS features, will not collect any identifiable data as (link to example), and all raw data will be published at link(1). Please help us to make Fedora a better OS

Yes / No, no choice selected.

(1) If someone download the data and find a way to de anonymize it, The project will delete that data, and make sure the path to collect that data is deleted in a update.

The Project have to trust the users to help the developers (So collect only anonymous data and tell that) .

If the users known that the data collected is anonymous, and is to make the project better, or have real answers to questions, the users will help turning on the telemetry.

by example I’m using Fedora Workstation, and the telemetry will not make jump ship, maybe if I’m unable to know what data is collected, I only will turn it off, so before you collect the data tell us what type is. maybe one dialog will not sufficient, but one and two subdialogs will

In my case, the only thing that can make me choose another OS, is if all apps are only available as flatpaks, the rpms apps are working for years, and the rpms have the advantage, using the system libs. and the telemetry will answer the question, what really the users in Fedora prefer rpms / flatpaks?

or is virt-manager still used? I do in three computers

my only problem with gnome/Fedora is the open dialog defaulting to Documents and not to the last location, I have many folders so I have to make too many repeating clicks, to open documents.

and about the question where jump ship? at the moment I don’t have option, is about a learning curve and more shortcoming than flatpaks.

Gabrielo

52

I voted yes as I want Fedora to improve for its own sake. Hopefully the team implementing this really does not abuse it in any way or tries to make Fedora a telemetry monster.

53

Sorry if this is off topic, but it didn’t seem to quite fit any of the other topics (including the main thread) either.

I was thinking about how one of the ways that FESCo could respond was that since this only targets Fedora Workstation, and how that only effects GNOME Desktop, they could request that an attempt be made to work with upstream first, and if that fails to implement our own gathering tool.

Lots of others have brought up other concerns with other upstream projects using opt-out telemetry packages (firefox etc.) and gnome would simply become one of those. Of course, there’s always other spins. (which may or maynot have those additional packages installed)

Having seen the volume of dissent/concern could FESCo require that we have a privacy (Preserving/sensitive/respecting I don’t know what word to use here) option available that includes no packages/software included by default? (users could always ruin that by installing chrome or whatever spyware of random .rpm sites)

It could also go beyond that to include ENVs to disable tracking by default (I think I saw DONOTTRACK=true or something like that mentioned somewhere in a post).

I know that spins/labs are usually a community effort, but it could go a long way in assuring the those with concerns that they’re a valuable part of the community as a fairly easy effort to get started and let them continue the trend. I’m just not sure if it’s in the scope of their power to make that happen (outside of personally deciding to spear head the project)

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54

I work for Red Hat. I don’t agree that this should happen:

You seem to be suggesting that Red Hat employees generally favor this proposal. This is not the case.

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55

Thanks for taking the time to point this out. I hope this goes a long way for people seeing shapes lurking in the shadows.

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56

Thanks for the clarification about your relationship with RH, same goes for @pcreech17.

My observation is that, many of the people in support are affiliated to RH, but not all RH employees are supportive of this (a unidirectional correlation). I hope that clarifies it.

Since you brought this up, I would also like to clarify that I do not attribute this to malice or “internal scheme” or “instruction from a C-suite”. However I do think any RH employee is vulnerable to group think.

RH employees are around internal conversations, worrying about RHEL products, and focussed on business goals. It is natural to unconsciously hold an opinion without realising what motivates it. Which is why common courtesy dictates people add disclaimers when there is a potential conflict of interest.

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57

FWIW, it’s more complicated than that. I’ve talked with Richard Fontana about this, and here’s my understanding: Fedora really is its own legal separate thing — we are an “unincorporated associations of individuals”.

Red Hat owns Fedora trademarks (someone has to) and owns (by virtue of having bought it for us!) most of our infrastructure, and sponsors us in other ways, and because of this and because we aren’t set up with a different legal structure ends up at assuming legal responsibility for a lot of our actions.

We explored a “Fedora Foundation” many years ago, and I’ve been looking (unrelated to all of this!) at reviving that idea again. But it’s a big thing to consider…

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58

An addendum to this. RH and IBM are US corporations, and it has been proven that in US, money talks. If IBM wants to own that data, they will through money at lawyers and they will get what they want.

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59

This is an interesting technicality for sure, but it still seems a little too thin to hang anyone’s trust on, I think.

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60

I think this is something worth exploring if only to have a contingency plan in our back pocket. Fedora’s reputation has already been impacted by how people have interpreted this proposal. It will be impacted by the decision FESCo makes too. After this, Fedora will likely continue to be viewed with scrutiny while taking collateral damage from Red Hat and CentOS (as unfortunate as that is). I don’t know if it will get that bad, but if the Fedora Project took the step to become an independent non-profit organization, that would make waves and could be used to restore trust.

Obviously that’s a heavy hammer to use for improving our reputation, and there are things that we could and should do before that point. However, I do think it would work and have long-term benefits toward one of the most common complaints about Fedora.

But there are also lots of challenges too, so this is all talk, lol.

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