5 ms·

Any chance that there exists an effort to maintain mirror forks of Microsoft open-source projects with telemetry code entirely removed ?

solarkraft 7y ago
There is VSCodium, I'm not aware of others.
- seemslegit 7y ago
  Thanks ! Was not aware of VSCodium
  - seemslegit 7y ago
    Although it appears to be a binary-only download claiming to be free of telemetry and non-floss code, it does not share the fork itself, what am I missing here ? EDIT: "This is not a fork. This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration."
JeffreySnover 7y ago
There are enough examples of companies doing terrible stuff that concerns are entirely understandable. Let me take the opportunity to say: 1) YOU ARE NOT OUR PRODUCT! 2) Our goal is to use telemetry to help us make better decisions about what will help our customers (as with with projects, only a subset of users are active in our community feedback process) 3) We are super open about the telemetry (including going through the PowerShell community review process) and publish all the data. More details here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-powershell-7-preview-3/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-p... Here is all the telemetry: https://aka.ms/psgithubbi https://aka.ms/psgithubbi Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
- seemslegit 7y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to address this (And a great thanks for Powershell ! Which regardless of some reservations about its language is a great technology and a major leap forward in terms of soundness and productivity in the IT sphere) I fully appreciate the importance of telemetry, crash reports etc. for product owners and teams, and am not under the impression that it is currently being abused by msft. However, as telemetry is a very general functionality and by their nature both company policies and software products are subject to frequent changes and given the many example of abuse by some companies quite comparable to msft in terms of their scope of impact and business incentives I don't think its usefulness overrides the principal concerns regarding the practice of including it enabled by default with distributed products even when disclosed. Anything that does not require an explicit user action to enable telemetry imo falls short of the desired ethical standard of respect for user agency that should exist in an ecosystem that wishes to foster trust between vendors and users and this goes double for open-source projects.
  - afiori 7y ago
    > Anything that does not require an explicit user action to enable telemetry imo falls short of the desired ethical standard of respect for user agency that should exist in an ecosystem that wishes to foster trust between vendors and users Personally, I disagree. I think that telemetry should be clearly disclosed (as any kind of 'phone home' functionality), so as to give user full knowledge of what will run on their machine. In this sense something negative about telemetry is that it is not uncommon to find it turned on by default after an update (I have no idea whether this applies to Microsoft), or when in situation like the recent gitlab blunder they decided to have third-party scripts for telemetry. For anything else active-by-default telemetry is in the same category as adding half a dozen random dot-files in your home directory (which often is not configurable). > ... this goes double for open-source projects. Again I disagree, with free-software you have the right to run a telemetry free version of the product and with open-source you have the ability to actually inspect what the telemetry is doing. The place where telemetry is sort of shady is the gray area that is neither free/open software not enterprise agreements with legally binding reasonable contracts; which includes for example Windows 10.

solarkraft 7y ago

There is VSCodium, I'm not aware of others.

seemslegit 7y ago
Thanks ! Was not aware of VSCodium
- seemslegit 7y ago
  Although it appears to be a binary-only download claiming to be free of telemetry and non-floss code, it does not share the fork itself, what am I missing here ? EDIT: "This is not a fork. This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration."

JeffreySnover 7y ago

There are enough examples of companies doing terrible stuff that concerns are entirely understandable. Let me take the opportunity to say: 1) YOU ARE NOT OUR PRODUCT! 2) Our goal is to use telemetry to help us make better decisions about what will help our customers (as with with projects, only a subset of users are active in our community feedback process) 3) We are super open about the telemetry (including going through the PowerShell community review process) and publish all the data. More details here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-powershell-7-preview-3/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-p... Here is all the telemetry: https://aka.ms/psgithubbi https://aka.ms/psgithubbi Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]

seemslegit 7y ago
Thanks for taking the time to address this (And a great thanks for Powershell ! Which regardless of some reservations about its language is a great technology and a major leap forward in terms of soundness and productivity in the IT sphere) I fully appreciate the importance of telemetry, crash reports etc. for product owners and teams, and am not under the impression that it is currently being abused by msft. However, as telemetry is a very general functionality and by their nature both company policies and software products are subject to frequent changes and given the many example of abuse by some companies quite comparable to msft in terms of their scope of impact and business incentives I don't think its usefulness overrides the principal concerns regarding the practice of including it enabled by default with distributed products even when disclosed. Anything that does not require an explicit user action to enable telemetry imo falls short of the desired ethical standard of respect for user agency that should exist in an ecosystem that wishes to foster trust between vendors and users and this goes double for open-source projects.
- afiori 7y ago
  > Anything that does not require an explicit user action to enable telemetry imo falls short of the desired ethical standard of respect for user agency that should exist in an ecosystem that wishes to foster trust between vendors and users Personally, I disagree. I think that telemetry should be clearly disclosed (as any kind of 'phone home' functionality), so as to give user full knowledge of what will run on their machine. In this sense something negative about telemetry is that it is not uncommon to find it turned on by default after an update (I have no idea whether this applies to Microsoft), or when in situation like the recent gitlab blunder they decided to have third-party scripts for telemetry. For anything else active-by-default telemetry is in the same category as adding half a dozen random dot-files in your home directory (which often is not configurable). > ... this goes double for open-source projects. Again I disagree, with free-software you have the right to run a telemetry free version of the product and with open-source you have the ability to actually inspect what the telemetry is doing. The place where telemetry is sort of shady is the gray area that is neither free/open software not enterprise agreements with legally binding reasonable contracts; which includes for example Windows 10.