Yet another reason to ditch the antiquated Homebrew, and switch to the cross platform Nix: http://nixos.org/nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs https://blog.errright.com/switching-from-homebrew-to-nix/
See you there! /s
Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
111–120 of 329 posts
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could really screw with their statistics by regularly changing the contents of that file.
Homebrew maintainer here. Remember that we didn’t put these analytics in place to get rich or get free beer at the local pub. Screwing up the stats won’t help anyone. We currently don’t have any overview of our userbase; we don’t even know how many people use Homebrew. More importantly, Homebrew currently only bottles the default options but we know some people use some options that cause the formulae to build from s…
I'll leave analytics turned on, but the blog post says it'll strip arguments. Your example above seems to conflict with what the post says, no?
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Homebrew's UUID linked with the user's Google Analytics ID in their browser cookies?
It certainly appears not. They're using curl and reporting a UID they generate. A Homebrew analytics user ID e.g. 1BAB65CC-FE7F-4D8C-AB45-B7DB5A6BA9CB. This is generated by uuidgen and stored in ~/.homebrew_analytics_user_uuid. This does not allow us to track individual users but does enable us to accurately measure user counts vs. event counts https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/share/doc/homeb... Of course…
You can always even check the code that’s running on your own computer. If you installed Homebrew in /usr/local the relevant files are /usr/local/Library/Homebrew/utils/analytics.sh and /usr/local/Library/Homebrew/utils/analytics.rb.
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great idea. Any rubyists want to provide a patch to do this?
trashing the telemetry data they're using to figure out what OS/ver people are using and bugs they are hitting makes you a real jerk use their opt-out if you want
Fair point, the public shaming that is happening now is probably punishment enough.
Frankly I don't trust the opt-out code to be (and remain) bug-free. There are, as far as I can tell from searching, no tests. So I feel more comfortable maintaining a patched version with the calls nooped instead.
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until next month when we might need to set HOMEBREW_NO_PIWIK=1337...
I'd assume "NO_ANALYTICS" would mean "no analytics" not "no google analytics?
Yep, and as you can see if you read the code there are as few references to GA as possible so that it’d be easy to change the service we use without editing code everywhere.
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great idea. Any rubyists want to provide a patch to do this?
trashing the telemetry data they're using to figure out what OS/ver people are using and bugs they are hitting makes you a real jerk use their opt-out if you want
Collecting telemetry data without letting users even know about it (much less opt in) isn't cool, either.
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#117See, that's why I am a diehard macports user. /opt/local and not /usr/local. No cross pollution with my own configure && make && make install packages, nicely separated and maintained.
macports requires all of xcode, homebrew just the CLI tools.
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
...which is very telling.
As in, people want privacy at the expense of volunteer time. Simple solution: Charge people for using Homebrew who don't want to send analytics in, fund Homebrew development with those funds. Otherwise, its an external cost being foisted on the volunteers by developers who want privacy at the cost of additional volunteer time. EDIT: The tone of this thread is the exact problem with open source projects and participat…
I think most people aren't concerned so much about sharing usage data. The problem is specifically the way it's being shared via a third party. Other apps ask if I mind sharing some data (e.g., Firefox), and I don't have a problem with that.
Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics
#119The fact that they are transparent about this, that we can opt-out if we want and that they're open source makes me feel more than comfortable sharing anonymous usage information with them. Homebrew has been amazing for me!
The fact that it's opt-out rather than opt-in... yeah, well. I don't think I need to finish that sentence.