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Comment by meantub | Hacker News Reader

Aren't you forgetting the part that says "solely: (a) to perform its obligations set forth in the Terms, including its Support obligations as applicable; (b) to derive and generate Telemetry (see Section 4.4); and (c) as necessary to comply with applicable Laws. Except as required by applicable Laws, Zed will not provide Customer Data to any person or entity other than Customer’s designees (including pursuant to Section 7) or service providers."

Seems like legalese to be able to take that data for support reasons, telemetry, and local laws that require that data be sent to them. I think ignoring this portion is a little uncharitable to them.

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>Aren't you forgetting the part that says "solely: (a) to perform its obligations set forth in the Terms, including its Support obligations as applicable; (b) to derive and generate Telemetry (see Section 4.4); and (c) as necessary to comply with applicable Laws

None of the above I like, and (a) is so vague as to be useless, including if you read the obligations.

>Except as required by applicable Laws, Zed will not provide Customer Data to any person or entity other than Customer’s designees (including pursuant to Section 7) or service providers."

Companies still do it all the time despite "applicable laws". And when the company is sold, all bets are off.

I'd rather they don't get, or keep, any to begin with.

Apparently you can do:

  "telemetry": {
    "diagnostics": false,
    "metrics": false
  }

The telemetry section of the TOS explicitly clarifies that that does not restrict their ability to use the data that is sent to them.

> Customer may configure the Software to opt out of the collection of certain Telemetry Processed locally by the Software itself, but Zed may still collect, generate, and Process Telemetry on Zed’s servers.

Note that they have (or did have, I haven't used their editor in awhile) an AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them at least when that is enabled.

>The telemetry section of the TOS explicitly clarifies that that does not restrict their ability to use the data that is sent to them.

Hopefully it does restrict them being sent to them in the first place.

I also found there are a couple of "Chromium" style builds.

>Note that they have (or did have, I haven't used their editor in awhile) an AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them at least when that is enabled.

There's also an option to turn ai features off. At which point of course, nvim is just as good :)

What I understand reading this is that if you use their online services, incl AI-agents, llm based tab-completion, auto-updates etc, you send data to their servers, and on that part they run analytics. Frankly, this is what I would expect anyway, ie if I disable telemetry locally, it would affect what I do locally, ie no data about how I use my software locally would leave the machine, but if I sent data to some server I would not expect people not to run analytics on their servers.

> AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them

Yes, this is quite obvious, how else could they provide AI tab completion? I hope anybody understands this before using sth like this. They do specify that "[...] telemetry expressly does not include Customer Data" though.

> They do specify that "[...] telemetry expressly does not include Customer Data" though.

Yes and no. They first grant themselves a license "to derive and generate Telemetry" from the users copyrighted material, something that they only need if they're deriving it from the actual creative works the customer updates, and not just the metadata about them.

And they define telemetry extremely broadly, effectively "anything useful for lawful business purposes except customer data".

So this agreement would seem to cover things like "an update to an AI model trained off of your code" or even "an AI summary of what you're working on and any relevant business information contained therein". As long as they process it to something new, it's not "customer data" (a term defined narrowly in the agreement). I don't expect that they are doing that, but I think they've given themselves permission to. The agreement is far too broad.

I agree that I expect that they are deriving metadata, and would expect that regardless of this agreement, but this agreement doesn't seem necessary for that.

That should be off by default. That alone is a "I won't use this" for me.

I was willing to give it another go. Now I read on this thread that it installs tons of node packages (so much for Rust native code) and even Go packages, and gets many extra processes running along with it.

Modern software. That's why I stick with Emacs or Neovim.

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7054

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12589

TL;DR: Mix of language tooling, unsigned proprietary blobs, corrupted and/or GLIBC-dependent files, redundant copies of already-installed executables. The Node packages especially are able to run scripts on install. Personal preference aside, might also create issues with security laws, certifications. All without user consent.

Issues opened in January and June 2024. They've been rejected, closed, and opened a couple times since then. No changes directly improving this yet as of April 2026.

Personally, I think even if they eventually fix this, given the attitude shown towards their users' machines, I should probably just use an editor where I don't have to worry about it.

This is a bad faith take. The terms are modifiable without the customer's consent or knowledge so "pursuant to these terms" is meaningless.

No one needs all those rights to do what this block says it's going to do. Any one would require that block to be changed in any contract between equals. But this is a contract of adhesion, so it's uncharitable for you to demand charity where they withhold their charity

What makes you think it's bad faith?

Can you cite the passage that authorizes Zed to modify the terms without the user's consent? Before I retired, my job was, inter alia, writing software licenses. I was GC for a tech company. I'd like to validate what you're saying, bc I'm the author of a Zed plugin and I wrote a language grammar that another plugin uses.

I don't use Zed, but I occasionally consider switching.

16.4

That's not what 16.4 says, although I can understand how you'd think that (and personally, I would not have written 16.4 this way, and I've had a longstanding issue with a lot of software license phrasing; used to find all sorts of loopholes in partner agreements even with enormous companies like AT&T). 16.4 warns the user that terms might change, those terms will be available, and continued use of the product after the new terms are promulgated will constitute acceptance of the terms.

You can even see this in action: https://zed.dev/blog/terms-update

When new terms come out, you're forcibly signed out of the Zed service and have to agree to new ones before using the service again.

It's most likely the case that this clause was written so that someone using the service, when offered new terms, can't say "nah, Imma stick with the old terms" and then claim Zed aren't allowed to revoke the license.

I had the same thought but if you chase down the definition of "Telemetry" as well as unilateral amendment rights pointed out in sibling comments, there's some broad authority implied.

None of that would require the "create derivative works" part.

I honestly can't see any legitimate reason why they'd have the right to derivate work from yours, and you don't insert that kind of terms by mistake.

Probably 'we reserve the right to train our next version of smart autocomplete based on the text you send to the current version of smart autocomplete'

Which is not different in kind from “we use your source code to improve our products” and is functionally identical to “we own your output because you use our editor.”

How do people continually fall for this. Refusing to look at the playbook that has been run time and time again and then getting offended when it is too late.

AI tab completion and agentic edits are often derivative works.

But should they own any rights on these outputs and edits done to your source code?

They don't. Paragraph 4.2, "Customer's Ownership of Output" [0]. I recite verbatim below for the sake of clarity.

These are about processing the data, not owning it. They need to process the data eg to provide llm-based tab-completion. A completion is derivative work, and it is also owned by the customer, as it says below.

[0] https://zed.dev/terms#42-customers-ownership-of-output

> The Service may generate specifically for, and make available to, Customer text and written content based on or in response to Customer Data input into the Service (collectively, “Output”), including through the use of technologies that incorporate or rely upon artificial intelligence, machine learning techniques, and other similar technology and features. As between the Parties, to the greatest extent permitted by applicable Laws, Customer owns all Output and Zed hereby irrevocably assigns to Customer all right, title, and interest in and to the Output that Zed may possess. For the avoidance of doubt, Zed and its AI Providers will not retain or use Customer Data for the purpose of improving or training the Service or any AI Provider products, except to the extent Customer explicitly opts-in on Zed’s specific feature to allow training and/or such improvement (such as fine-tuning) and is solely for the benefit of Customer.

Why do you need to see what I'm writing in my IDE for telemetry?

I had a long conversation about this with Gemini this morning. I described the telemetry practices and Gemini told me about all the local and federal laws that were being violated. Then I mentioned it was telemetry, and it turned on a dime and said it was fine because the user agreed to it in the TOS. Disgusting.

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