[bitcrazed]

Hey Nick. I'm the PM for Windows Terminal, and formerly, WSL:

Thanks for your thoughts on WSL & the new Terminal.

Re. release mechanisms, etc: Terminal will be delivered via the Store so we can ship out-of-band.

We're aiming to deliver new Terminal preview builds every 2 weeks or so which, since we're delivering via the Store, will auto-upgrade everyone soon after each release.

Re. Insiders: We do NOT gather any personally identifiable information. We only collect anonymized statistics about some of the features you use and/or issues you experience. Why? To ensure that we can find and fix issues as effectively as possible.

For example, with WSL, we collect the number of times an un-implemented syscall is called, or # of times a syscall returns an unexpected error. We couldn't care less WHO experiences these issues, only how OFTEN they occur. This info (esp. combined with bug reports in our repo, etc.) has been essential in helping us prioritize which syscalls are being called, which we've implemented, which are failing, and thus, which we need to pay attention to. Without this info, we wouldn't have been able to make WSL as good as it is.

We understand the community's concern about data collection - heck, EVERYONE should be - but in the general scheme of things, I think it fair to say that Microsoft's telemetry data collection is pretty well contained and is not egregious.

If you'd like to see what telemetry is being collected, on your machines, this may be of help: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/diagnostic-...

HTH.

[nickjj]

Hi,

The last time I tried to install insiders it mandated that I sign into Windows with a real Microsoft Live account, which requires an email address sign up.

Where as the stable version of Windows allows you to create an offline account.

If I sign in with a Microsoft Live account, now you can associate my email address to my OS usage stats. Isn't that the definition of personally identifiable data?

Also, you may have linked to the wrong sub-link. The page that lists what's tracked for insiders is this one I think? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/windows-dia...

It mentions "User ID -- a unique identifier associated with the user's Microsoft Account (if one is used)". It also mentions collecting a bunch of low level network data that look questionable, such as IP addresses flowing through network devices. Isn't that saying "logs every website you visit"?

Then it mentions it logs every app I open and how long it was opened for, and even what I search for in those apps. I didn't go through the whole list in detail but that was what I saw in a 60 second scan of the page.

But on the topic of WSL, are you saying if we run Windows stable we'll be able to get and continuously update WSL v2 from the store? That would be neat.