Some devs object because they don't trust Mountain View:
Russ Cox, a Google software engineer steering the development of the open source Go programming language, has presented a possible plan to implement telemetry in the Go toolchain.
However many in the Go community object because the plan calls for telemetry by default.
These alarmed developers would prefer an opt-in rather than an opt-out regime, a position the Go team rejects because it would ensure low adoption and would reduce the amount of telemetry data received to the point it would be of little value.
Cox's proposal summarized lengthier documentation in three blog posts.
Telemetry, as Cox describes it, involves software sending data from Go software to a server to provide information about which functions are being used and how the software is performing. He argues it is beneficial for open source projects to have that information to guide development.
"I believe that open-source software projects need to explore new telemetry designs that help developers get the information they need to work efficiently and effectively, without collecting invasive traces of detailed user activity," he wrote.
And the absence of telemetry data, he contends, makes it more difficult for project maintainers to understand what's important, what's working, and to prioritize changes, thereby making maintainer burnout more likely.
[...] But such is Google's reputation these days that many considering the proposal have doubts, despite the fact that the data collection contemplated involves measuring the usage of language features and language performance. The proposal isn't about the sort of sensitive personal data vacuumed up by Google's ad-focused groups.
[...] Former Google cryptographer and current open source maintainer Filippo Valsorda, in a post to Mastodon, expressed support for the Go proposal and disappointment in the tenor of the criticism.
"This is a large unconventional design, there are a lot of tradeoffs worth discussing and details to explore," he wrote. "When Russ showed it to me I made at least a dozen suggestions and many got implemented."
[...] "Many community members believe that telemetry should either be opt-in, a.k.a. voluntary, or not included at all," Weisz explained. "The Go team has not expressed any criteria by which they will decide whether or not to move forward with the proposal, leading several to wonder if the decision has already been made."
Weisz compared the Go proposal to Microsoft's decision to add telemetry to the .NET developer tools, which similarly transmitted data by default unless the developer opted out.
[...] Supporters of the proposal want to discuss how telemetry should be done and detractors say the issue is whether telemetry should even be considered. Those are different discussions.
A developer account identified as tv42 makes it clear that mustering arguments about the kind of data collected miss the mark: "I fundamentally don't care how 'good' Go telemetrics would be, because I don't want the FOSS ecosystem as a whole to take any more steps down that slippery slope. There will not be a way back from this."
Software is so much easier when you can move fast and break things.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 13 2023, @06:11AM
then you want to use no-go.
(Score: 5, Funny) by rpnx on Monday February 13 2023, @06:28AM (4 children)
Time to fork Go, I propose the name "No".
(Score: 5, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 13 2023, @09:43AM (2 children)
I propose Forgo?
(Score: 5, Funny) by inertnet on Monday February 13 2023, @03:31PM (1 child)
As "GOTO" is frowned upon, I propose Go2.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Tuesday February 14 2023, @01:48AM
GoToo?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday February 13 2023, @06:49PM
Isn't it possible for Go to fork itself?
Especially if it can communicate with a central server.
Meanwhile, I am trying, so far unsuccessfully, to persuade Chat GPT that I am a house cat.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Touché) by maxwell demon on Monday February 13 2023, @06:36AM (3 children)
Once, Google had given themselves the motto: Do no evil. Now they revised it: No, do evil!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday February 13 2023, @06:46AM
How about, Do, know: evil.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Monday February 13 2023, @08:53AM (1 child)
The mottoes are a Freudian thing anyway. Companies verbalize their inferiority complexes using their mottoes, but negate them. Just take M$: "Where do you want to go today?": you were always stuck with no hope of escape.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Zinho on Monday February 13 2023, @06:33PM
I always read that as, "Where can we tell you to go today?"
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 13 2023, @06:52AM (6 children)
That's because, just like advertisement, NOBODY WANTS TELEMETRY! Nobody likes to be spied upon or monetized.
I've often wondered how entire industries thrive on forcing things people hate down their throat any barely legal way possible. If I was an entrepreneur and I had to choose what kind of business model to adopt, I'd try to do something my customers like, not something reviled by everybody and their dogs. I wonder how those people sleep at night.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday February 13 2023, @07:57AM (4 children)
Nobody wants taxes either, but people do want some of the things paid for by taxes.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 13 2023, @08:39AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 13 2023, @09:37AM
I do want taxes: they pay for useful things like roads, schools and healthcare - at least in countries other than the US.
I don't want the telemetry when Google and Microsoft run the telemetry, because I know exactly what they do with the data: exploit it to turn a profit. All I get out of this is my privacy violated.
And don't give me the "Go team is only weakly controlled by the mothership". That's bullshit: Google gives them money. They're Google's bitches. I don't believe for one second Google isn't going to use the telemetry data for something other than making the Go language better. And even if I have no proof of this, it's always a safe bet to assume the worst from Google with respect to privacy invasion.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 13 2023, @09:40AM
Also, there is another issue: what if I want the best performances out of my code? Who gave these people the right to instrument my code and slow it down for their own purpose, without asking me first?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2023, @01:57PM
False equivalency. Just because two things are not liked doesn't mean both are necessary or have equal value.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 13 2023, @07:05PM
Woe, woah there!
Java programmer here. Let's not make such unwarranted assumptions about how compilers might behave.
Even better, a language should replace a runtime support library with a runtime executable that runs your program. Thus even the runtime environment is enhanced to have unknown or unexplainable capabilities.
Woah! Let's not bring Ask Jeeves into this. Not to mention Oracle.
Those whom the Gods would destroy, they must first teach C++.
Being a Java user, I am mostly sane, so far as I can tell.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimios on Monday February 13 2023, @07:48AM (4 children)
Somebody should make a big blacklist with all the telemetry URLs so we can nullroute them in /etc/hosts
(Score: 4, Informative) by AnonTechie on Monday February 13 2023, @11:11AM
For MS Windows one can use:
O&O ShutUp10++:Free antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 [oo-software.com]
Spybot Anti-Beacon
PrivateWin10: https://github.com/DavidXanatos/priv10 [github.com]
This repository is a living fork of the last stable release of DisableWinTracking: https://github.com/bitlog2/DisableWinTracking [github.com]
privacy.sexy Open-source tool to enforce privacy & security best-practices on Windows and macOS, because privacy is sexy: https://privacy.sexy [privacy.sexy]
WindowsSpyBlocker: https://crazymax.dev/WindowsSpyBlocker/ [crazymax.dev]
There are similar alternatives for Linux, however, I would like to see similar software for Android phones as well.
+++
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2023, @11:30AM (2 children)
Windows can bypass the hosts file. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 13 2023, @07:07PM (1 child)
Does it do this without Clippy getting involved?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday February 13 2023, @08:07PM
Clippy is covering the escape of the IP-packets by keeping you busy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday February 13 2023, @10:21AM
I can't stop laughing. Maybe you guys really deserved this.
Once I rejected using golang for projects for just the doubt about possibility of design backdoors in toolchain...
We all know how and by whom the Google was originally conceived.
So you blame the Chinese for what?
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Monday February 13 2023, @10:26AM
FTFA:
Other languages manage fine with developers' forums. The only argument Google can have for this shit is that it implants spyware for themselves. And will it stop at collecting development data, or will the spyware carry over into the apps built with it, like website building services?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ShovelOperator1 on Monday February 13 2023, @11:18AM (1 child)
Isn't this already on for some projects?
I remember building some sources written in Go, and it certainly connected to Google only to check in some dummy dependency-related info. For me, a single connection's metadata is enough to call the thing spyware.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday February 13 2023, @07:15PM
The modules proxy is more like pypy: https://proxy.golang.org/ [golang.org]
compiling...