is the Julia project so strapped for cash that they need to monetize Julia users?
The first question JuMP gets asked when applying for funding/awards/etc is how many users we have. Here is a verbatim quote from an email I received today, which asked for “substantiated estimates of the number of installations of a software package.” Should I reply “No idea. Somewhere between 1k and 100k.”?
Moreover, at present, we have no idea how many people use each solver (and on which platform!). Knowing how many people installed which solver would allow us to prioritize support from our finite developer time.
This would also allow us to lobby the commercial solver developers to provide official support (or $$). To quote one company “We’ll want to provide official support at some point, but it looks like the scales haven’t tilted quite yet.” It’d be nice to know whether 100, 1000, 10000, or 100000 people per month use their software; that might change their mind.
Finally, if it is opt-in, the vast majority of users will not opt-in. This leaves us no better off than we were before. Opt-out is a good compromise.
To summarize, at the cost of sending pseudonymous UUIDs (which you can opt-out of), we get easier access to sustained funding for Julia ecosystem development and more efficient usage of developer time. That seems like a good trade-off to me.