I run Gentoo, which has a telemetry use flag. This will enable telemetry for a number of packages.

I hate telemetry on non-FOSS software like Windows, but is there real harm in doing it with FOSS software? I like to think I’d be helping the devs create better software.

https://packages.gentoo.org/useflags/telemetry

  • falsem@kbin.social
    22·
    1 year ago

    Generally yes unless you have specific privacy concerns. It helps developers know what features people are using so they can be prioritized for development and maintenance, issues people encounter, hardware they’re running on, etc.

    I’m reminded of Firefox removing ALSA support a few years ago because according the their telemetry no one used it. This made all of the people using ALSA very mad - but they all had telemetry disabled so how was Mozilla supposed to know?