SoylentNews

hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Some devs object because they don't trust Mountain View [theregister.com]:

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 [github.com] summarized lengthier documentation in three [swtch.com] blog [swtch.com] posts [swtch.com].

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 [swtch.com] 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 [abyssdomain.expert], 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.

Original Submission