Web tracking is different in that it's ongoing tracking of behaviour. When I buy something from a shop, that's the end of their knowledge: the shop has no idea what I use it for.
When you make non-cash purchases in a shop they sell your purchase data to an aggregator who adds it into their profile of you and derives demographic classifications from that.
Single woman driving a Subaru? Your odds of being lesbian go up a few points. We'll target you for a certain form of advertising.
This has been going on for decades. Before the web ever existed.
Hmm, that must be where the breakdown is. It seems like you view just the transaction as your interaction with Gitlab, but to me if I'm on Gitlab, I'm still "in the shop" so to speak. So to me it's more like sitting in a coffee shop than going to the grocery store.
One of the big issues people had with the Gitlab proposal was that it was going to use 3rd party trackers, so Gitlab wouldn't have full control over your data. Some people were commenting that if the analytics data never left Gitlab, they wouldn't have an issue with it. They were also going to block access to your account until you accepted the tracking.
Following the shopping analogy, it'd be like they let you in the store, but they won't let you leave with your purchase until you fill out a survey by a 3rd party company.
