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KDE's Telemetry: The Tip Of The Iceberg?:
Recently, there was a debate on the PCLinuxOS forum about KDE Plasma's implementation of telemetry through KUserFeedback. While in PCLinuxOS, we can remove it without any collateral effects to the system, while other users reported that doing the same in other distros (like Debian 11) results in the complete removal of KDE Plasma! Why force such an implementation, if, as KDE's developers say, it is just an innocuous, privacy-respecting measure?
Coincidence or not, in the past years many popular Linux distributions started rolling out optional telemetry. Then it was the time of computer programs: news broke out in May regarding Audacity, a popular audio editing app, which announced it was starting the use of telemetry. The move was finally pushed back after users revolted against it.
While many point out that the data collection is by opt-in and entirely anonymous, others have found that, even if you don't activate telemetry, data is still collected, using computer resources, registering "apps and boot, number of times used and duration in /home/user/telemetry folder." As such, they argue that, because of the way Linux permissions work, other programs could have access to these log files. KUserFeedback's FAQs page confirms this:
"KUserFeedback is designed to be compliant with KDE Telemetry Policy, which forbids the usage of unique identification. If you are using KUserFeedback outside of the scope of that policy, it's of course possible to add a custom data source generating and transmitting a unique id."
Do any Soylentils have opinions about this, or experiences with it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:35PM (4 children)
I don't much like GNOME, but it has one unbeatable feature: the G in its name. It ensures that sort of shenanigan will never happen.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:53PM (2 children)
Does it? Where in the GNU license does it disallow slurping? Pretty sure KDE has the same license, at least for now.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @11:11PM (1 child)
KDE / QT licensing was all over the place, but is gpl/lgpl now. Generally, I trust a group dedicated to protecting user freedom, FSF over a for profit corp any day to not go full spy mode. That said, gnome project seems to be controlled by redhat/ibm to an unhealthy extent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Projects#Licensing [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @05:58PM
Unfortunately, the PHWs (pointy hair'd whores) are turning Gnome into Windows whether anyone likes it or not. They only care about gaining Windows users, not existing Gnome users. Just look at how they implemented software updates: total shameless ripoff of Windows. What kind of dumb bitch thinks Windows does updates properly from a user experience perspective.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Marand on Friday October 01 2021, @09:23AM
These shenanigans aren't happening in KDE either, this whole thing is a mix of FUD and outright lies. I looked into it on my system and commented about what I found [soylentnews.org], and TL;DR: it's bullshit. It's per-app, everything's off by default, it logs everything it sends so you can always see what you're sharing, and even at its most permissive setting it wants to send very little and nothing identifiable. Applications using it are even restricted from locking functionality behind telemetry sharing to stop devs from "forcing" users to share data to get more features.
It's probably the best example I've ever seen for how telemetry reporting should be handled.