Let's assume you're a good samaritan who wants to contribute your data (analytics, collection of information about your system, etc.) to your favorite project.
If you want to help project you like but are also wise, you are interested in information such as:
- what data are gathered from your system
- where are these data stored, and who has access to them
In most proprietary tools, you care only about point two because you can hardly see what the application does.
But we live in a FOSS world. So, if you're a person like me, you would be interested in sharing your data with as many as you can reach potential users (developers, in this case). So, when you inspect point one, you can share your data without fear.
Now let's get back to the gnome-info-collect GNOME initiative.
I asked four months ago how gnome-info-collect will publish community data.
The experiment started without authors defining how the data will be processed.
Today I found a blog
We are also currently investigating options for making some of the data available in a way that mitigates any privacy risks.
My outcome is: If the project is unwilling to provide answers, do not contribute if you value your data or time.