If you have a judge who is not completly dumb he would laugh you off for such litigation. If you have a judge who still has his staff print out internet pages for him it might get compilicated for you as a contributor. Idiot judge already happened to me, that was an expensive lesson life taught me.
So no, I wouldn't risk sticking my name on something like that.
Because everybody else does it, doesn't mean you don't get away with it. (And over here the big boys google/apple can do a lot of things the small ones can't even begin to try - they have the advantage of getting before a "high enough" court with intelligent judges)
Why?
Under European law, you can only transmit such information or track it if you have an explicit opt-in to it.
I'd doubt you'd get laughed out of court, considering the Cookie law was written for exactly this case.
If they were transparent, they would ask you before transmitting data.
Websites tracking you is expected. Local tools tracking you is not.
Also Ideally I'd suggest you should be looking for informed consent before starting to gather information of this nature where an application previously did not do it.
Something similar to Debian's request to submit data for the package popularity ratings that is provided when you install debian might make sense.
* A phone is a communications device. We know it transmits information. Unwanted tracking that exceeds the metadata strictly necessary for the execution of it's purpose and usage of this metadata for any other purpose needs to be opt-in.
* The browser is a communications application. We know it transmits information. Unwanted tracking that exceeds the metadata strictly necessary for the execution of it's purpose and usage of this metadata for any other purpose needs to be opt-in.
* An internet-enabled TV. We know it transmits information. Unwanted tracking that exceeds the metadata strictly necessary for the execution of it's purpose and usage of this metadata for any other purpose needs to be opt-in.
* Open source project collecting usage metrics? Downloading software packaged generates metadata. We understand that, and use the software on that basis. Any usage of that metadata and tracking my usage habits of said Open Source project needs to be opt-in.
* That Phone in your pocket? "No problem"
* The browser you're using right now? "This is fine"
* Your internet-enabled TV? "All good"
* Open source project collecting usage metrics? "Woah, hold on there buddy"
Get some perspective.
They're completely transparent about which very limited usage metrics they use. You can inspect exactly which metrics are sent. And you can turn off these metrics if you want.
You're not paying anything for the product, and the analytics aren't being used to target you as a consumer, or to pitch advertising at you.
Simply by reading this page on hacker news you've sent more information to a third party than you would using brew.