Gitlab's "Important Updates to our ToS" - A nice and sleazy way to say we are unleashing Telemetry and Spying on you!

When that email with subject line "Important Updates..." arrives, most users simply send it to the trash or archive it. And yet, some of the most interesting things could be found in that because the sender knows that most users are going to do that exact thing you just did! So, its a very easy way for a service provider to deliver some "not so nice" news to their users.

So, Gitlab.com who once declared themselves the champion of internet freedom (when Github was getting acquired by Microsoft some months back), now seems to be exploring new avenues of earning by way of subjecting their users to intense telemetry and spying.

For a company like Gitlab who almost accused Microsoft and Github of colluding against the open source community with a "holier than thou" approach, this seems to be a bit rich. That's why I was surprised when I received this "Important Updates to our ToS" email today which declares outright that we are going to subject you to spying and telemetry! Not just that, it also says that your access to Gitlab's web services and APIs will be blocked until you accept these "new and important" terms!

Users should understand now that there is no such thing as free lunch. They should also understand that no corporation is an absolute saint or absolute evil. People in open source community usually look at Microsoft scornfully and yet, this instance clearly shows that there is no difference between them and the likes of Gitlab who try to portray a "holier than thou" image.

At the end of the day, we all need such services which makes code sharing and collaboration easier. And if you can't afford a self-hosted server, you might have no option left but to use a service like gitlab. In that case, go ahead and use it but remember the trade-offs you are making.