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See what’s changing in Firefox: Better insights, same privacy
(blog.mozilla.org)
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this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Most free software does not have telemetry, and when it does it's almost always opt-in. Firefox is the one major exception to that rule.
Hmm, so what user-facing free software is at Firefox's scale? I think Ubuntu has telemetry, for example (though I think they even have fewer users).
Ubuntu telemetry is fairly minimal, as of last time I used it a few years ago. Not remotely comparable to what firefox does. They just want to know what hardware you have, there's no user behaviour tracking, and it's fully opt-in (you have to deliberately turn it on when installing). KDE and Gnome have a little something like that as well now, I think. Almost everything else does not.
Debian has a list (last updated 2023-10) of software among the 97000 packages they distribute which have been found to violate user privacy by "phoning home" for telemetry or other purposes:
I mean, that depends on how you define user behaviour. It tracks which packages are frequently installed, for example, or how often people install Ubuntu in the first place. All of which I think is pretty legit, in my opinion, since that only involves aggregate user statistics that help prioritise work and detect common problems - but that's essentially what Firefox is doing too.
Debian is a great example of relatively commonly used free software that doesn't really collect data btw.
Canonical apparently turned on enabled-by-default telemetry for new installs in 2018 which records basic system hardware stats and such. It's not that much compared to what Firefox sends, but adding it still did damage to their reputation.
Another thing Ubuntu has in common with Firefox is a continuing long-term decline in market share. As they do things like adding telemetry, flirting with the idea of putting advertising in the package manager, insisting that everyone use snap, et cetera, users have started to go elsewhere. As I did.
In the case of Ubuntu though, the company's main business is in serving their corporate customers. If it's little-used by the rest of us the company might still do well, as I hope they continue to do. Firefox does not share that advantage.