I'm 100% with you, but if that's what you want, don't buy DJI.

DJI is pretty great with telemetry, logs are stored locally and on the cloud with many ways to access your data. Not so great with privacy due to governments having a tight watch on drone flight, making it very likely your flight data is monitored.

It's not just that, all their stuff is locked down hard, you can't mod anything and you can't fix the bugs they refuse tom

That data is available as part of the API. I use other flight control software like Litchi that gives me a lot of control. Even allows me to create and import a flight plan for semi-autonomous flight.

this seems illegal

Absolutely not. It’s illegal for the common person in America, but there are plenty of locations where it wouldn’t be, especially with a drone license.

This is completely legal in the US on both recreational and commercial licenses, so long as you have visual line of sight to the drone and the ability to regain direct command of the drone via RC (and are following all other flight rules). It is commonly used for video work, such as programmed aerial timelapses.

It's only illegal to leave LOS. Whether the computer is in control, or the sticks are in control the PIC is still the PIC.