Yes, I like KDE and am happy to help. And I really like the fact that it shows an example of what data is being sent. If more software did this, I would be willing to do it more often.
Technically I can just click "Send" after it gathered some log files, but it just throws me an error. I don't remember what it was from the top of my head but I couldn't really find anything via internet search either so I just close it as that is also too much effort at this point already. Because yeah, crashes usually happen at terrible times anyway, at a point where I just can't be arsed to go through the effort to figuring out how fix it or where to even report it (the KDE bug tracker is a convoluted mess).
No. Nothing against KDE I just want to minimise all information leaving my computer. If something is bothering me I try to change it myself or make a bug report or feature request.
Yeah same here I got zero tolerance with spyware/telemetry and it's one of the main reasons I switched to Linux in the first place.
Do I believe KDE would misuse my data? Nope not really but it's not something I want to promote no matter how anonymized the data is or how nicely they ask.
Same rule goes for any project even ones I've donated money to.
If you look at the data that KDE exports, there's nothing that directly identifies you. That's why I'm willing to help KDE. Like I said in my other post. It's all about transparency.
The issue is that this data can be used to fingerprint or de-anonomize users. Even if it's just a big list of statistics, knowing how likely or unlikely a system change, setting change, version, etc. is can help greatly with a person looking to pin down users. They'll know how likely a person with a specific pattern is the same person.
I'm glad it's not distributed. If it was, I'd slide it all the way back to 0. Good intentions from the collectors doesn't stop bad intentions of consumers
Datasets are still valuable for the broader community - there are many datasets out there, like the Brain project or the Oasis project which provide important insights into brain illnesses to train state of the art ML models on.
Any practitioner who wishes to work on those datasets is to sign a contract where they pledge not to try to identify any patient.
These kinds of contracts have been around for a while now, and if we could negotiate a situation as tricky as brain illnesses, I'm certain the same can be done for which version you have of a software, which particular config changes one has made or, say, if you use KActivities at all.
Yes. It's all about transparency. I can see exactly what KDE is exporting, so I'm willing to help KDE. I cannot say the same for closed source software.
