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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

> We believe an open source community can ethically collect limited aggregate data on how its software is used

For me the big question is why? Proprietary software needs telemetry because the user is not in control and features are only added by the owner of the software, thus the centralized owner needs to know what features to add.

Open source is different. It is decentralized. Anybody can tweak the system to make it better for themselves. In addition, as opposed to proprietary software which sells licenses, the most common open source monetary model seems to be selling support in which case the people buying support can ask for the feature without telemetry.

To put it another way, you need telemetry for a cathedral since decisions are made centrally. A bazaar doesn’t need telemetry, since decisions are decentralized.

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> We believe an open source community can ethically collect limited aggregate data on how its software is used

And then they proceed to list a bunch of non-ethical and extremely specific data.

>Anybody can tweak the system to make it better for themselves.

99% of users just use whatever the default packages their ON gives them. Practically none of them are digging into the code and making changes.

>as opposed to proprietary software which sells licenses, the most common open source monetary model seems to be selling support in which case the people buying support can ask for the feature without telemetry.

Proprietary software which are sold are in the business of creating products with enough value that people are willing to pay actual money for them. It is smart to look at what these businesses are doing because they are incentivized to make good software so they get to be efficicient about doing so. Meanwhile most open source programs are given out for free and do not care about user experience or providing features for the mass audience.

Asking for features publically is just one, biased signal. There is more to telemetry like seeing what features are actually used. What investments should be double downed on. What features should be made more clear how to use. What crashes are the worst. What parts of your program need to be optimized. etc.

> For me the big question is why? Proprietary software needs telemetry because the user is not in control and features are only added by the owner of the software, thus the centralized owner needs to know what features to add.

Open source projects can use telemetry to prioritize bug fixes and feature enhancements. You can't fix every bug, but with telemetry you can focus development on issues and features that affect the most users. Here are some use cases that come to mind.

AVX-512 is complicated; there are 21 extensions. What percent of users have some AVX-512 support and which extensions are popular?

Which buggy devices, clients, and applications are worth adding workarounds for?

Which protocol settings can we safely turn on by default?

What are the most popular GPUs? Where would we get the largest benefit from performance improvements, testing, and bug fixes?

What percentage of users are affected by a new Intel CPU bug? How should we prioritize developing a workaround? Does it need to be deployed this week or this month?

Which GNOME applications and configuration settings are frequently used?

What are the most common display resolutions?

What are the most popular installed packages? Should we add them to our base system?

You may have answered your own question. Perhaps centralization is the point as we move closer to the “extinguish” phase of open source as we have known it.

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