Honestly, if you gave me a thoughtfully worded rationale (improving product and support, all data anonymized, etc) and defaulted it on, I probably wouldn't have

Honestly, if you gave me a thoughtfully worded rationale (improving product and support, all data anonymized, etc) and defaulted it on, I probably wouldn't have given it a 2nd thought. The way this was presented created a lot of the problems. Some people would be upset regardless, and you need an opt-out for commercial customers. There are cases where collection is a nonstarter for security and compliance reasons. Some people are upset on philosphical grounds, and for those using Gitlab for free, I think you are perfectly within your limits to tell them to pound sand (or host it on their own/fork).