Thank you for proving my point - again, no rational debate here. Obviously nobody would ever make a function name their bank account number. And why would metrics include function names? Metrics are numbers, not logs.
> Similarly, you don't know what they're doing or how doing that might expose them in ways they might care about. If my country decides to outlaw something and starts looking for mentions of it and jailing people, your decision yesterday could endanger me. This happens with some regularity, and you can't reliably predict the topics that get targeted.
Yet another contrived example that has nothing to do with the subject at hand and has no rational basis for happening. A random country creates a random law that happens to outlaw a compiler metric? You think a country's gonna make software development illegal soon?
> I generally approve telemetry for tools because I know how useful it is. But I see no reason why that should be your choice instead of mine.
Nobody's taking away your choices! You don't want telemetry? Block the outgoing connections! Disable it in a config file! Use a friggin' VPN like all the other privacy-paranoid do!
And the example is really not contrived. For example, homosexuality has waffled between "get married, love is love" and "your government is explicitly trying to kill you" repeatedly around the world. Congratulations! You worked on Grindr two years ago when they started their internet dragnet, as they can see by information coming from your compiler, on your machine, at your home! You now have to flee the country. They're not going to be looking for your compiler crash logs, they're looking at everything they can possibly collect for keywords, and oopsie, there's one.
You (you personally and the "royal" you) cannot predict what will matter in the future, and your legitimate-threats do not match everyone else's legitimate-threats. I agree privacy-extremists exist, but so do other kinds of extremists and extreme situations.
Telemetry is not sensitive data. Telemetry is "signals". For desktop software, telemetry is often what operating system, cpu architecture, and software version you're running. Your OS reports that, your browser reports that, every self-updating application you use reports that. This is not controversial nor sensitive data and has no privacy implication.
The core thing to understand here is that what constitutes their concerns is not your decision. It's theirs.
You don't know what they put in their code. Maybe they did put their bank account in a function name. The tool won't tell them they shouldn't have done that, and there's currently no reason why they shouldn't if they're just playing around.
Similarly, you don't know what they're doing or how doing that might expose them in ways they might care about. If my country decides to outlaw something and starts looking for mentions of it and jailing people, your decision yesterday could endanger me. This happens with some regularity, and you can't reliably predict the topics that get targeted.
I generally approve telemetry for tools because I know how useful it is. But I see no reason why that should be your choice instead of mine.