This may be controversial, but trying to collect the data of your free users to offset the costs of the infrastructure/resources needed to support the free users is not a bad thing - especially when you give those users an option to opt-out.
You make it sound like their goal is to do bad things. That’s not true. Corporations are not good or evil, they are amoral. They don’t care if what they are doing is good or bad - it just matters if they make money.
they’re free to just do the right thing completely
The right thing is to make it opt-in for everyone, simple as that. The entire controversy goes away immediately if they do. If they really believe it’s a good value proposition for their users, and want to avoid collecting data from people who didn’t actually want to give it, they should have faith that their users will agree and affirmatively check the box.
If free users are really such a drain on them, why have they been offering a free version for so long before it became a conduit to that sweet, sweet data? Because it isn’t a drain, it’s a win-win. They want people using their IDE, even for free, they don’t get money from it but they get market share, broad familiarity with their tool amongst software engineers, a larger user base that can support each other on third party sites and provide free advertising, and more.
This may be controversial, but trying to collect the data of your free users to offset the costs of the infrastructure/resources needed to support the free users is not a bad thing - especially when you give those users an option to opt-out.
You make it sound like their goal is to do bad things. That’s not true. Corporations are not good or evil, they are amoral. They don’t care if what they are doing is good or bad - it just matters if they make money.
What exactly would that entail?
The right thing is to make it opt-in for everyone, simple as that. The entire controversy goes away immediately if they do. If they really believe it’s a good value proposition for their users, and want to avoid collecting data from people who didn’t actually want to give it, they should have faith that their users will agree and affirmatively check the box.
If free users are really such a drain on them, why have they been offering a free version for so long before it became a conduit to that sweet, sweet data? Because it isn’t a drain, it’s a win-win. They want people using their IDE, even for free, they don’t get money from it but they get market share, broad familiarity with their tool amongst software engineers, a larger user base that can support each other on third party sites and provide free advertising, and more.