i’ve got a different mind. this affects all manjaro-users and therefore shouldn’t be hidden that only members get access.
as already mentioned from some users, this info is enough to create a fingerprint of a user. it’s always that these “harmless” datas can be used to create a bigger picture if you combine these data. that’s a common way and i’m really scared that the manjaro-devs are willing to go this way. the reputation of manjaro is meanwhile already damaged cause it has high-stakes in the linux-community. if they asked the users to use it as an opt-in option → no one had been bothered but the fact to create such a data-mining tool as opt-out without the explicit permission of the users is a nasty and rude behaviour and a total no-go.
It is like a famous american (former) president - if you tell the same lie enough - it will eventually become the truth.
I even read lies about the project (on lemmy) - that the tools collects mac address and hostname - which is big fat lie.
There is only a script which is voluntary to run - how the system info is going to be collected is yet to be decided. The systemd service is an idea - nothing is set in stone.
And please do check the source - see for yourself how harmless it is.
I just watched the US elections - it seems that most people look at things entirely the wrong way.
Paranoia is also rife… and I’m at a loss to suggest anything.
For opt-in, you’d need to prompt people with an information panel - with two big buttons to quit or continue… but then people might start bit-ching about being bothered by this… and while I accept that it’s an innocent and useful opt-in function, which you could tweak and adjust to get information that’s interesting, a lot of people will get rather excited by it.
well this is your argument ? it’s ok cause others are doing “it” also ? that’s a weird argumentation that ends up in an disaster. respect your users ! that’s all i can tell and keep in mind that a lot of fedora-users have left due to such questionable decisions.
I think that’s enough now. We got different perspectives and I thank everybody who formulated their support or criticism in a civil way.
A few people also like to overdramatize these kind of topics with emotional language like “disgusting” and “shameful”, while in the end we only talk about a few hardware metrics and no personal data at all.
We will evaluate the response, set it in context to our overall user base and how useful the statistics would be to us as well as look at the legal landscape one more time.
