Will you use software that has telemetry on by default?

The answer for me is a hard no, but I'm curious what others think. The justification often used is that it's the only way to "make the product better". That's not been my experience as either a developer or user. My favorite tools are opinionated and created by people with a desire to solve a problem and good UX skills (think git, vim...). My least favorite tools are corporate software that was obviously built and designed by committee.

Preferably, only if it is FOSS and I can disable the telemetry before starting the program for the first time. Especially for local software. If the software requires the internet anyways, it is only acceptable if it is only for internet related functions and only if it connects to the servers that I will specify (e.g. if it is a NNTP client, to be able to specify my own NNTP servers including LAN or localhost if I want to, even when it is not actually connected to the internet).

For knowing how to improve the software, I would like to write public comments to criticize it so that they can improve it from that (and so that others can publicly criticize my public criticism too if desired).

Don't care as long as it doesn't affect core functionality (like requires internet connection to use for something that should work offline).

The benefit of a product that is paid for by personal data is immediate and real to me - I use this product and get benefit about it.

The risk of said personal data being used against me is currently hypothetical. So far, I haven't experienced any drawbacks.

For anything that is privacy sensitive, I use a dedicated privacy oriented software.

Yes, because I don't care about telemetry. I have telemetry in the products our company makes because it's a useful tool to see where customers are stuck. At the end of the day, those customers pay for our salaries so we'll do whatever we can to make them happy.

It's possible I've let myself develop too negative a knee jerk reaction to the idea of telemetry. Sometimes I've lost a feature I use in a product that I'd turned off the telemetry for, and the developers cited low usage of that feature. Did I shoot myself in the foot?

If the software isn't critical, then no. Making telemetry opt-out is making a statement about the attitude of the producers that makes me very uncomfortable.

If the software is critical, then yes. And I'll opt out. And I'll keep scouting around for a suitable replacement.

As long as it’s used to improve the product what’s wrong with that?

Are product people supposed to chant and perform esoteric rituals to gain telekinetic insight into how the product is being used?

I switched to Librewolf just because of Firefox telemetry. So the answer is generally no, i will however try your software in networkless VM as last resort if alternatives don't exist.

Telemetry doesn't factor into my choice of software much. I would guess at least half my computer time is spent in telemetry heavy apps.

Only as a last resort when no alternative is available. Fortunately this is rare since we've got plenty of options available.

Not if I have any choice in the matter - and more often than not, I do.

I try not to; there's usually a good alternative.

Depends if is it on by default but the project is open about it or if it's "hidden".

I usually try to avoid the later.