are you sure? I'm not. In truth, only they know. Here's the code I worked around in my fork. Why does it fetch an external image? They could just include it in the repo. Why is it fetched from docuseal.co? I would guess GitHub renders badges like this too.
Blocking the DNS of the GitHub host
Sure, but why not default to privacy in the upstream source? Why make users and self-hosters do extra work? Feels more like a penalty for non-Enterprise users than a benefit for paying up: you'll either pay with money or your data.
Also note: it is actually docuseal.co that would be blocked (I incorrectly guessed it pulled the image directly from GitHub), so that's probably not as big of a deal than blocking, say, GitHub for a LAN with multiple tech-savvy users.
they were very clear about it
I disagree. I'll grant you they made a clear decision (and quickly), but didn't explain further. Frankly I found their replies a bit confusing; they implied the issue as entirely about OEM/white-labeling and avoided the tracking/phone home question. They should just clarify why the badge actually exists when the question came up the second time.
Maintaining a fork is an insane amount of work
Agreed that maintaining a fork is work. But, I mean, check mine out, please. It's 3 lines, and could probably be reduced to a few characters. I'd still love to avoid the fork because your other reasons are quite valid, especially about trust. That's what this is really about, to be honest. I don't trust this isn't a phone home, and I don't want to have to trust them on this.
I’m not going to worry about doing that every time a release is missed by you
100% agreed.
they have a pro version, so aren’t removing the customizations that exist
I don't understand. Will you explain what you mean here?
It’s part of a lot of open source projects.
If you mean badges on GitHub repo home pages then yes, I agree.
If you mean mandatory phoning home or, really, reaching out for any images/static assets from a self-hosted service, I disagree.
Here's the right way to do it (again, assuming this is a phone home): be 100% transparent that/if it is a phone home, have a privacy policy around data collected, and make it disabled by default. Traefik does this, for example. They have a phone home toggle called TRAEFIK_GLOBAL_SENDANONYMOUSUSAGE that defaults to false. Note the especially privacy-concerned (and perhaps less upgradae-concerned?) may wish to disable TRAEFIK_GLOBAL_CHECKNEWVERSION as well.
it’s of no security concern, freal
I never claimed it was. Maybe my fork will have security improvements as well someday, but right now it just has this one tiny patch. And again, I agree with your other points about forks: best case is this fork becomes unnecessary (as transparency around the badge increases).