[yourapostasy]

> You can create a randomly generated cookie of sorts instead of doing anything with a users' credentials.

That throws off their statistical analysis. Random cookies generates a new cookie for each new install or re-install, inflating the "users" count. If someone installs this on five different servers, the stats under random cookies will show five separate streams of data, and they will draw improper conclusions that a particular operation used on all of those servers if five times more popular than it really is. A configuration flag to disable the data collection is reasonable, but using a well-known hash like Whirlpool to anonymize the data stream is also reasonable.

If someone doesn't like data collection, then they shouldn't use cloud products, and they should just as vociferously declaim cloud services. With cloud services, whether or not the usage data collection is anonymized is at vendor discretion, but here, you control the source. Using a utility for a cloud service, and complaining about usage data collection, is ironic, considering AWS surely collects the same data.

[openasocket]

> AWS surely collects the same data

Well of course they do, since all of these commands send off calls to AWS servers. And is you're using AWS products you already trust Amazon, that doesn't mean you trust a random person who put some code on Github.