Re-enabling telemetry

Posted Jul 28, 2024 23:51 UTC (Sun) by somlo (subscriber, #92421)
In reply to: Re-enabling telemetry by KJ7RRV
Parent article: Lessons from the death and rebirth of Thunderbird

> Is there a way to re-enable telemetry on distros that disable it?

Re-enable by whom? If it's by the end user, that's just a deliberate "opt-in", which nobody should have anything against.

If we're talking by the original software author, then, thank $deity, it's Free/OpenSource, so any intermediary (like e.g., a distro) could modify that source, rip out the re-enable-telemetry-after-distro-disabled-it functionality, and redistribute so modified copies to their downstream.

This would be an example of why distros are a *good* thing, when they advocate on behalf of their users when users' interests are at odds with those of upstream software authors.

Re-enabling telemetry

Posted Jul 29, 2024 20:35 UTC (Mon) by KJ7RRV (subscriber, #153595) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, I'm asking if there is a way for me to opt in and enable telemetry when my distro has opted out, other than building Thunderbird myself. I do want to send telemetry, but my distro disabled it.

Re-enabling telemetry

Posted Jul 29, 2024 20:49 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> Yes, I'm asking if there is a way for me to opt in and enable telemetry when my distro has opted out,

Assuming your distro didn't patch it out altogether (highly unlikely), this should just be a matter of turning the default back on. See this page for the specifics:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-telemetry

(That page also shows how to examine the gathered data, for those that want to ground this discussion in facts rather than conspiratorial hand-waving)

Re-enabling telemetry

Posted Jul 30, 2024 1:53 UTC (Tue) by KJ7RRV (subscriber, #153595) [Link] (1 responses)

I can't enable it that way. "Allow Thunderbird to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" (along with the associated checkbox) is grayed out, and a note below it says "Data reporting is disabled for this build configuration."

Re-enabling telemetry

Posted Jul 30, 2024 14:48 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> I can't enable it that way. "Allow Thunderbird to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" (along with the associated checkbox) is grayed out, and a note below it says "Data reporting is disabled for this build configuration."

It looks like you're going to have to either run an upstream-provided binary [1] or compile your own. [2]

You might consider filing a bug ticket against your distro's package requesting that instead of completely disabling telemetry capabilities, they leave it in but set the default to off.

[1] Obtainable via Snap and Flathub, and from thunderbird.net directly.
[2] Perhaps by taking your distro package and removing the "Telemetry removal" patch?