First, this is backwards. As many have pointed out, any and all telemetry should be opt-in, not opt-out, so the variable should be named YES_PLEASE_TRACK_THE_LIVING_SHIT_OUT_OF_ME, and if and only if is it equal to 1, should the data be collected.
But what irks me more is this measly list of unsolicited PRs. Going over a list of projects where you are a nobody and inject yourself with your "improvements" there, with the implication that if you don't accept the PR, you're somehow an enemy, is far from being a good way to advertise your cause. I remember Alex Gaynor spamming a lot of projects with PRs to amend the documentation to use gender-neutral language, and I remember Coralina Ehmke carpet-bombing projects into accepting codes of conduct. No matter how noble your ideas are, mass-harassing people into accepting them is a major dick move.
The thing is opt-in telemetry doesn't work. Few people will actively choose to enable it, even if they read the documentation and are aware of it.
I think we should distinguish benign uses of telemetry from tracking that collects invasive details about the environment the app is running in.
A popular CLI open source project I use has telemetry enabled by default. The authors are upfront about the data it collects and reference the source code for everyone to verify it. It collects generic things like the app version, operating system, CPU architecture, and a couple more datapoints about the app usage. The IP isn't logged, but is of course known at the time of submission.
This data is not sold or used for any nefarious purpose, but mostly to track which app versions and which features are most commonly used so that development efforts can be better planned. And there is of course a CLI flag and environment variable to disable it.
I'm perfectly fine with this level of telemetry, as long as the authors are open about what data is collected and how it's used. Making the app switch to opt-in would probably eliminate most submissions and would make it impossible to know how the app is used in the wild.
But what irks me more is this measly list of unsolicited PRs. Going over a list of projects where you are a nobody and inject yourself with your "improvements" there, with the implication that if you don't accept the PR, you're somehow an enemy, is far from being a good way to advertise your cause. I remember Alex Gaynor spamming a lot of projects with PRs to amend the documentation to use gender-neutral language, and I remember Coralina Ehmke carpet-bombing projects into accepting codes of conduct. No matter how noble your ideas are, mass-harassing people into accepting them is a major dick move.