I couldn’t find pkgstats in the repo. Has it been removed?
It will be removed by default.
But you can install it manually. 
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I fully understand your thinking as a user. Sure. I don’t want to get tracked, noone should know that I already have installed Manjaro. Hence you’re in the forums and post about Manjaro, even shared some “personal” info here in this forum with others @ghoultek. From a developer perspective you may need that data to go into meetings with potential supporters like companies to get funding. Those will always ask how often is your software used and who is using it.
Sure, topic Telemetry got extreme abused by Microsoft and other companies. They ask for money from the user, collect their data, may share that with partners and even present you Ads, which may or may not break your system. If we look at the Apple at some point it may even make sense to share some data with them. Services like track my Iphone and others depending on data collection and if you don’t use it and loose such an expensive phone it comes in handy. But ya, it may come with a bad taste after all.
So we know your story about Telemetry but that doesn’t speak for all users. Some don’t even register to this forum and we really don’t know how many users there are. We can guess with forum users, download stats or even stats of our homepages, however an exact count of our user base we don’t have.
Therefore we try to find a solution without the need of any personal data and opt-in option to extend the data shared, to help the project to focus more on the needs of the larger user base. We already managed the base functionality to count installations in a way to see if the user only tried it for some weeks, has it installed months ago or even kept it for years. Then we may collect the used desktop environment, kernel version and basic technical info about the system. The server component will serve the collected data and makes it public to all. This prevents any data selling as it is public goods anyway.
With this we will offer a platform for distros, software developers and all kind of projects having an ethical framework to collect needed data in such a way that the personal data of a user is always protected. And if that is not wanted at all, the client software can be uninstalled completely.
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we removed it at some point, as it made no sense to push data to Arch. This may also explain the decline of installed systems of Manjaro. However it shows that the Community installed it at some point.
Regarding KUserfeedback: Since KDE e.V. is based in Germany and Germany is a strict state in regards of data collection, they have to comply to given rules: KUserFeedback - KUserFeedback
However, this application is more a framework to help KDE Software to collect the needed data to improve it on their way from a desktop environment to a platform. So a user can interact with a UI and share additional useful data with KDE.
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Not on topic, but I’d have to say that Manjaro devs sometime make some unilateral and arbitrary decisions. Like, you don’t use Yakuake, fine. But removing it from the ISO? I don’t use pamac, would you remove it?
Nobody said anything about removing yakuake. I think there’s probably a language barrier issue going on here. The only reference to that quote was that if you remove kuserfeedback, then this would also remove yakuake.
To the best of my knowledge ─ but I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong ─ then yakuake is still supplied in the latest Plasma .iso. And if it isn’t, then it’s trivial to install it yourself ─ many (or even most) distributions don’t even install it by default, but it’ll always be available in the repositories.
I clearly stated my intentions in main topic.
I said in
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Then I stand corrected, Sir. 
And by the way, yakuake is being used quite a lot. I myself use it too, and I consider it an essential component of Plasma.
Having it in the .iso also means that it’s readily available in the live session with a single press on the F12 key, and many of our members’ (usually self-inflicted) problems can only be remedied by way of a chroot from the live session. So removing it is not a good idea.
But I digress ─ this is off-topic here. 
What has Yakuake to do with this. In the end the Manjaro Maintainers decide what software is preinstalled on our ISOs. Those are examples and a user can either create their own ISO, use the minimal or install additional software as wanted. Even remove if he wish so. So sure Yakuake might be used by many, but if it won’t fit into the vision we have for our Plasma edition, we may remove it as needed. Users who miss it may install it anyway. However that is more or less offtopic.
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Let’s look at Open Telemetry. It is a framework which is supported by many companies using it as their base and either sell or offer free software on top of it, to utilize the gained data. To explain that to an end user is hard, but it is also hard to explain it to a developer:
So these examples are a simple app, a web service and how gitlab might improve by using telemetry. More or less these talks are for big services and not really working on Linux Distributions. It also might have not worked for KDE, so they wrote their own …
Good point and I fully agree that this is necessary step to show partners how relevant the Distro is and on which parts of it one should focus on. But is the Manjaro Team trying to reinvent the wheel? I mean there is for example a solution, which can be integrated: https://linux-hardware.org/ (Just a note)
Myself, I don’t mind about sharing telemetry if it doesn’t contain personal data and is public aswell. I would rather say, new users would benefit from it, so that one can search and see if some hardware is running on the Distro. New users can see what is working and what not, like for example on the Ubuntu Page: Certified hardware | Ubuntu
Telemetry is not evil. It is like a butter knife that can be used to butter sandwiches, but can also be used to kill people.
If you don’t want a butter knife, then use a machete to butter your sandwiches, or go without butter in making your sandwiches. Your choice.
I hope it is understood…
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For now we are thinking of opt-in feature with detailed information of reasons to have it.
“For now” is not encouraging wording to use and is manifestly worrying, albeit depicting the thinking at the moment of the decision-makers. For what it ostensibly means is that at this moment or point in time we’re considering opt-in as the way to go, but this could change to either a forcible and permanent strategy (with no way or no easy way to change this without breaking or potentially breaking the system) or a strategy that’s an opt-out one.
Out of all the possibilities mentioned above, opt-in is the best strategy and shall always be so in the main for privacy and security focused people. Opt-out is never really the best strategy, even though to some it may have a certain appeal and appear to be the best strategy. Opt-out is similar to the inane strategy forced onto us in certain countries, and done so without a referendum in a purported democracy, by idiotic government legislation of which solely appeals to the business mentality, whereby for us to not receive marketing and the like phone calls one has to specifically opt-out.
Although companies and different forms of businesses may like the notion of obtaining different types of data from a telemetry scheme, this increases the code base of the operating system or software with the added possibility of bugs and glitches, plus adds to the online data usage of the user. Insofar as the latter is concerned, not everyone has the opportunity to have a large amount of data or unlimited data. Many look at this scenario only from their generalised perspective of being fortunate to have a large data plan or an unlimited data plan, failing to consider that we’re not all equal in what we can afford or what is locally available to us. Also, it remains a possibility in the near future for ISPs to change their mindset to more restrictive data and connectivity plans.
Arising from this whole scenario of limited and limiting ISP plans, along with the clogging of our connections with increasingly more data going through the connection both ways, as increasingly more businesses and governments turn to various forms of telemetry, those with eyes to see and minds to use realise that we as users and our Internet connections can potentially become swamped with all that data usage and activity. Human technology and the various systems managing it are still exceedingly primitive and can only take so much.
In certain respects, the earlier days of the Internet and the code base of software was a better experience. Humans, though, consistently think of ways to exploit systems and bloat operating systems and general software in their desire for more and more data, their unrelenting habit of desiring more and more control of people’s devices through their operating system and software. In the end, referencing Linux, will Linux then be replaced by a new contender on the block as more distributions turn to telemetry?
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Lets me show you one of the files there (for me there are about 6 of them … for kate, etc)
They look like this:
$ cat .config/kde.org/UserFeedback.org.kde.dolphin.conf
[Source-applicationVersion]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-locale]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-places]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-platform]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-qtVersion]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-screens]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-settings]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-startCount]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[Source-usageTime]
dataSourceCommonSettings\activeState=true
[UserFeedback]
ApplicationStartCount=465
ApplicationTime=3696425
Does that bother me that its being created? Not really.
Would it bother me if someone saw it? Not really.
Would it bother me if the system made connections I didnt want it to? Yes, but it doesnt.
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Unless I’ve missed something, a manjaro team member said it’s opt in rather than opt out and the user can choose what data they consent to. I really don’t see the problem with that, christ you can’t even access some websites without accepting every cookie under the sun
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Unless I’ve missed something, a manjaro team member said it’s opt in rather than opt out and the user can choose what data they consent to. I really don’t see the problem with that, christ you can’t even access some websites without accepting every cookie under the sun
A rather simplistic interpretation and rendering.
An opt-in scenario was indeed stated, but it was phrased in such a manner as to indicate that’s the way they’re thinking and looking at it at the moment, for C*****'s sake. That’s the point, and a point I specifically indicated in my comment to the specific forum post, in that you in your comment to which I’m replying overlook and disregard without proper thought in forming the basis of your argument. You actually state this in your comment when you say, “Unless I’ve missed something…”, along with “I really don’t see the problem…”. You definitely have missed something and you really don’t see the problem or potential problems.
Besides, just because an aspect of Internet activity is doing this, that or the other, or going in a certain direction, doesn’t mean everything has of necessity to take that direction and be like the common herd of sheep following behind each other like mindless creatures. Being different is often the best way to go in certain situations, but humans don’t generally see this or agree with it as they blindly and emotively concur with the presiding paradigm of thought and action as the only and legitimate way to go.
You attempt to justify your stance by mentioning cookies as though they haven’t in a lot of situations become the proverbial cookie monster. Over time, since the introduction of cookies, of which were meant at the time to be harmless in the context of not abusing the user’s privacy and security and trust, have been surreptitiously abused by numerous entities for other purposes.
In a phrase, you don’t seem to understand the entire scenario that’s unfolding and can potentially unfold in our computer and online life.
The good old procedure of a user manually reporting problems, issues and bugs is the preeminent method. For with humans, as predictable as humans usually are, it rarely remains at a best case scenario when systems go outside of the user sanction. User control is a must in this context. Sadly, to many people never or rarely learn from past mistakes, as history has recorded.
There is such a thing as (informed) discernment.
… and then there is fear.
I know which one I regard as good counsel
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I actually like how it is communicated, honest and without marketing spin. I would be more concerned if the devs wrote it differently.
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You’re spinning what has been said to match your theories. Anyone can come with such theories as yours but this is not reality of what has been said, what is happening, and probably what is going to happen…
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Strictly disagree by own experience
I saw a firewall engine caught Dolphin’s network connection request if to leave open it’s window with multimedia content. Did not see the same for text files folders. It connects to random Internet IPs with random ports i meant I have open one window of it and after some time point it starts to connect. Just like the VLC 3 and 4 does but Dolphin starts after about 3-4 hours after opening, VLC after about 8-10 hours on paused mode. AFAIK I have fully disabled all feedbacks:
For me the behavior looks like at least as suspicious-ware, I did not analyze their network traffic, only connections attempts.
I did not find a time to purely collect the info, timing, hosts needed for bug report about the cases, just blocked them.
Just as summary that was there: Add an installation step of firewall setup or to notify a user that no firewall enabled by default - #21 by alven (under the the history of outbound connections (destination host list) spoiler)