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Yeah.
Do you mean "programmers" by developers?
Or do you mean "the people who are involved in the development of the app"?
Because the money & marketing people are the ones who want trackers.
But they are usually such a high prio for the app that it's put them in or get fired.
I have always been called a developer in my career, but yeah, I am a programmer/code monkey. Developer sounds posher, but we all know what we really do. I like programming, writing code, and I could do without all the bureaucracy that goes with it, some of which I really hate.
I think marketers are not concerned about moral issues. The opinion of programmers is interesting.
Every year there are more and more different trackers in the applications and this is upsetting.
Generally it is framed in a business case and Devs/programmers don't have much of a say unless there is a technical limitation.
If you don't have your code report in at all, then you have no idea how many people are using it or what features they use the most. So when someone says "how many people use the thing? We need to prove it is useful so people will pay us to make it" then you can't answer. Or if someone says "that feature is hard to maintain, can we just ditch it?" you either have to leave it in or risk ditching a very popular feature.
I haven't personally experienced it. But have observed a discussion between product manager and engineer who had to put it. Seemed like regular business to him, he didn't seem bothered at all.
I would think only people personally bothered by it might have any issue with it, they are rare.
Unfortunately, this is the case. Many ordinary people say that the modern world is what it is and they still cannot change anything.
For me, yeah, I think it's immoral. Other devs? They can do what they want; it's their work, and if I'm not giving them money, whining about it is just being a choosy begger. I ask only that people be up-front with their trackers, so I can factor it into a decision to use or move on.
I won't put trackers in my code for advertisement, because I believe ads are inherently bad for society. I might put analytics in for design decisions... like, how many people actually use feature X? Where should I focus my development attention? The noisiest complainers about some feature do not always represent the majority, and analytics can help. However, in nearly none of what I code is other people's concerns a high priority. My FOSS code is to scratch my own itch, and by giving it away gratis I free myself of any obligation to people. The only caveat is if I get a message from someone who's using my code, who wrote code that I use. In those rare cases, I do feel a sense of obligation born of cameraderie. I'd feel the same way if the music artist WMRI, or one of the members of the bad The Skins wrote me and asked for some feature. I've paid for their stuff, but they published it "pay what you think it's worth," with no minumum, which is IMO a pretty decent model.
If only the world wasn't full of mostly leechers, socialism might actually work. But, yeah... that's my long-winded response to your question.
Thank you for such a detailed, sincere comment.