I love this, it pretty closely echoes my own attitude about these things.

If I don't trust the software, I don't use it. That is one of the main reasons why 95% of all the software I use is OSS in some form -- not because OSS is inherently more trustworthy, but because the culture of the OSS world makes it much easier to trust.

But the expansion of opt-out telemetry in OSS absolutely erodes that trust, making it more like commercial software. Software engaging in opt-out telemetry, or telemetry that you can't even opt out of, is software I will do my best to avoid using, OSS or otherwise.

I am saddened to see this trend happening in the Linux world. There are several trends that are reducing/removing the very things that make Linux better than other OS choices, and this is one of them.