> 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?