Why would I want an auto-update mechanism in the software? That's what my distro's package manager is for. And it doesn't care who I am or where I'm from. Nor has any other software I've encountered with such a useless-to-Linux-users mechanism demanded any information about me.
In short, that rationale is obvious nonsense. That may be why they claim they're doing it, but it doesn't hold up.
Also, their website actually works.
[Hits "Zap style sheets" bookmarklet to make it possible to get at least a minimal amount of information out of the page]
Ugh, they still actually think the cloud shite is a feature.
Thus making their vehicles even more difficult to sell outside their own country.
So . . . maybe it's a good thing that Gentoo with GNU Hurd exists? Does Hurd even have an AI policy?
I think you'll find that even distros that are generally anti-AI and don't allow its use in their own projects are pragmatic about not being able to influence other people's software (for instance, Gentoo's AI policy flat-out states that it doesn't prohibit packaging AI-coded or AI-related software, although there's been some discussion about marking it so that the user can make an informed decision).
If a person knowingly goes out and buys an illegal service, they will usually be guilty of at least conspiracy. I can't think of any way this guy could have advanced in the queue that's legally okay, short of offering the people ahead of him masses of money to leave the queue (or, y'know, waiting). Maybe you're more imaginative than me. But I still think he should have been aware that what he was asking for was shady at best.
Is the company that furnished the AI agent also guilty of providing a tool without enough warnings and safeguards? Quite possibly.
Exactly who holds how much responsibility before the law in this specific case can only be determined by a judge, and I am not one. Plus, the details of the law in Australia aren't going to be the same as those of the law where I am.
There's nothing wrong with the language that I'm aware of, but some aspects of the ecosystem seem to have not been thought out with Linux packaging in mind, let's say.
Just give the source away. Don't package it at all (or at most, do so for your own distro). If your software is good enough, others will do the packaging for you. You'll have to field a few inquiries, maybe, until someone steps up, but if you've got a canned response already written those don't take long to handle.
This dev's problems are twofold: first, he's in too much of a hurry to get this thing out everywhere, instead of waiting for others to take the burden off him. Second, he wrote his code in Rust, which is difficult to package correctly in a self-contained manner because it tries to force you into using its own language-specific dependency system. He picked up a footgun and shot himself with it, in other words, and is now hopping around cursing.
The system is broken by design. Notice-and-notice is much saner than notice-and-takedown, but would have given the big media mills the vapours.
I seem to recall from an article on this incident that I read some time ago that the gym's system was really insecure (like, anyone accessing the right URL could mess with it levels of insecure.)
I apologize for phrasing things so poorly that several people seem to have missed my actual point, which was: no one else with an auto-update feature requires any information about you, therefore if they claim that's their reason for asking for users' personal information, they're lying. They may have other reasons, which they have not stated. They may even be good reasons, although I'm not holding my breath.
And yes, I have compiled my own copy with that nonsense switched off, thanks for asking. However, it's the job of people who understand that this is overreach to push back against it on behalf of the people who lack the knowledge, time, or energy to investigate it. I don't like throwing even Windows users under the bus.