This is an extraordinarily level-headed and well-reasoned version of the "how much telemetry" conversation, from both "sides". The Julia community comes off looking really good here.
Moreover, at present, we have no idea how many people use each solver (and on which platform!). Knowing how many people installed which solver
would allow us to prioritize support from our finite developer time.
This would also allow us to lobby the commercial solver developers to provide official support (or $$). To quote one company "We'll want to
provide official support at some point, but it looks like the scales haven't tilted quite yet." It'd be nice to know whether 100, 1000, 10000, or
100000 people per month use their software; that might change their mind.
Finally, if it is opt-in, the vast majority of users will not opt-in. This leaves us no better off than we were before. Opt-out is a good
compromise.
The rest of this discussion devolves into "Everyone else is doing it". The lone dissenter finally gives in to peer pressure.
I remember when using download statistics was enough. Developers still maintained software. No "trade-offs" were needed.
Do you remember applying for grants to fund software? It's tough out there, right now. Harder than it once was - software is more expensive, and funding agencies are more critical.
No download statistics are currently available for Julia packages. That's essentially the issue that the Pkg.jl telemetry is trying to address.
As much as people in the Julia community have dunked on Matlab in the past, at least MathWorks has their business model worked out, people understand the tradeoffs being made, and the dark pattern being used is just closed source software instead of exploiting PII.
They have no special access nor do I see a first order effect that benefits them. Just that the open source Julia ecosystem will benefit and that will feed back into JC's market.
I think it is more likely the majority of users don't care, so do whatever the default is. If the vast majority didn't want telemetry enough to opt out anyway, then there wouldn't be any point in having it at all.
> The truth comes out.
The truth was never hidden. It's all laid out quite plainly here: https://julialang.org/legal/data/.
> If providing usage statistics is something that the Julia developers already know the vast majority of users do not want to do
There are three reasons someone might not opt-in: they don't want to, they don't know about it, or they simply don't care. To ignore the latter two is simply disingenuous.
> The rest of this discussion devolves into "Everyone else is doing it". The lone dissenter finally gives in to peer pressure.
That's certainly not my read of the 200+ post thread.
What are the reasons users do not read the /legal/data page on the Julia website? What are the reasons users do not read 200+ posts from developers debating the use of opt-out telemetry? To ignore such reasons, assuming they exist, would also be disingenuous.
If you put the choice clearly before users and they knowingly, affirmatively choose to submit usage data, then no 200+ post thread is necessary. Instead, the choice is not left to users. It is made by developers, and the fact of the use of opt-out telemetry is found on a webpage that developers know users do not read.