You need police and a judicial system and you fix them whenever they break. But you don't need telemetry, it's entirely optional and shoddy implementations translate into unnecessary risk.
Given it is open source software, I'd say we have not only recourse but self-determination here. It's also transparent what is being collected and whom it is being sent to. If you want to know what they store about you, it should take one email and a GDPR reference to find out.
I'm no fan of privacy invasion, always bother clicking through the banner to find the reject cookies option, and sent out plenty of GDPR requests whereas almost nobody else I know ever sent one. I'm not in favor of tracking, but collecting anonymous statistics, especially when they open with "privacy-preserving" and the business is not Facebook or Google or so where we know there's shit about to hit the fan, the cynicism and mistrust in this thread baffles me. Nobody minds when they browse the web and every site keeps access logs invisibly, but oh boy if someone announces keeping a visitor counter for a configuration screen to see if people can find their way to it
> it should take one email and a GDPR reference to find out.
I am not in Europe. The GDPR doesn't help me.
> collecting anonymous statistics, especially when they open with "privacy-preserving"
I am far from convinced that such statistics are gathered in a "privacy preserving" way, but that's neither here nor there.
> the business is not Facebook or Google or so where we know there's shit about to hit the fan
The problem is that you can't just trust the current devs. You also have to trust all future devs and companies that may buy the thing. It's not Facebook or Google now, but it could be in the future. And this is Fedora, which is connected to Red Hat, which is connected to IBM.
And it's also not just about privacy. It's also about impact on product development. It's not exactly rare that software has been made much worse as a result of decision-making based on telemetry data.
> Nobody minds when they browse the web and every site keeps access logs invisibly
No? I think quite a lot of people mind this. But there's nothing that can be done about that. It's still worth trying to keep everything from getting even worse, though.
If we can't trust people ever, what's the point in doing anything?