I feel adding telemetry represents a change in the whole Fedora project. A significant and far-reaching change. We are going from no telemetry to “let’s add a very capable telemetry service on every install and decide later what we will use it for”. Doesn’t matter if it’s opt-in or opt-out, it will still be there… waiting to be activated by a simple change in data gathering policy.
Off all the proposed opt-in / opt-out variations, I’d say the only acceptable version would be opt-in and only install the required telemetry packages if the user agrees to telemetry. A clear yes / no choice without any pre-selected buttons or dark pattern trickery. Same goes for Silverblue and other image based desktop variations. No telemetry packages on the default ostree images. Layer the packages if the user agrees to telemetry.
Anything less and I will look for a new distribution.