I'm all for protecting privacy, but, Don't you think it is reasonable for a FOSS project/company to collect basic stats on their audience? They aren't even forcing you to give up your identity. Just an email address, which could be something that don't particularly identify you, while they get unique user stats. You could obviously mark them as Spam, if they do end up spamming you..
However, I should be allowed to opt out. I also don't consider my (work) email address to be meaningful data they can use to improve the quality of their software or gain an understanding of how it's being used. At best I can see them deduping download counts through it which can be done in other ways.
No. That is not free, that is paying for it with your privacy.
Thankfully in this case I can just go build the thing myself but these kind of sign up walls without a way to opt out of them do annoy me.