

OP, my personal preference is to supply raw k8s manifests in a project. These are far easier to manipulate using tool called kustomize. Just think of it as an alternative to helm. The big thing is that kustomize removes the need for forks because it can run against manifests defined by a url.
I absolutely understand not liking opt-out telemetry. Do people generally not like opt-in telemetry? Is this really why the community shifted to a different project?