Ralf Corsepius wrote:
It unattendedly collects various data which is not publically available from a local machine => SPY-WARE
It only does so if you explicitly select the "Yes" option. Otherwise, NOTHING IS SENT WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION. That's about as simple as it can be said...
Connecting this information with IP-numbers opens many opportunities for abuse => Opens many chances to privacy breaches.
IP addresses and other personally-identifable information is not sent, only the hardware listing.
You have this (BTW: absolutely not unique and forgable) hardware id in connection with IP-numbers. This allows backtracking.
Only if you tell others the UUID stored on your computer. This UUID is not sent as part of the data report, as I understand it.
Having a script that is not being run automatically (not used by first boot), but being run at user-request as part of eg. a bug-report (similar to bug-buddy) is a completely different topic.
No, it's virtually the same thing: Nothing happens without the user's explicit consent.
There is not way to convince me about such spy-ware. If you want to collect statics with an opt-in, you can achieve the same by launching a counter website.
Fine, then according to your "definition," Yum and virtually every web browser are all also spyware, among others. They also send with their requests your hostname/IP information, User-Agent information, timestamp, etc.