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Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

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Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#191

Post by Forbo »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #10
xutopia wrote: post #5

The 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!

Is an alert displayed to the user the first time it tries to send info to Google? If not, that is far from "transparent". It's good that they tell you how to opt out on the website, but I can't remember the last time I went to the website. Probably when I first installed Homebrew on this Mac.

I get the following:

  % brew update
  ==> Homebrew has enabled anonymous aggregate user behaviour analytics

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#193

Post by mikemcquaid »

I'm the maintainer who added this. I apologise for the poor communication. I would have responded sooner but I've been on a plane for the last 10 hours. I'd hoped the documentation would have made clear our reasons for doing this but I feel the discomfort so since getting off my flight I've opened and merged three PRs (https://github.com/Homebrew/install/pull/42 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/143 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/146) to better communicate this to our users on installation and `brew update` before any information is sent and ease the opt-out process.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#194

Post by jordigh »

mikevm wrote: post #4
LeoPanthera wrote: post #3

Set HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1 to opt out. The right thing to do would be to make it opt in, not opt out. (Which would not be without precedent. Debian's popcon is opt-in.)

That's probably true, but then no one would opt-in.

At 193,622 submissions, I wouldn't say "nobody" opts in to popcon:

http://popcon.debian.org/

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#195

Post by javajosh »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #193

I'm the maintainer who added this. I apologise for the poor communication. I would have responded sooner but I've been on a plane for the last 10 hours. I'd hoped the documentation would have made clear our reasons for doing this but I feel the discomfort so since getting off my flight I've opened and merged three PRs ( https://github.com/Homebrew/install/pull/42 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/143 https://gith…

It should be opt-in, not opt-out.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#196

Post by K-Wall »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #90
atmosx wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get littlesnitch on Mac and you won't need to rely on third parties alerting about outgoing connections, although I recon the when we're talking about something like homebrew it's not easy to vet every single outgoing connection. Still littlesnitch is really awesome for the privacy conscious users.

LittleSnitch also makes you totally paranoid about how almost every piece of software is spying on you without explicit consent. Also, Microsoft really needs to clean up their domain usage, because it takes 999 permission rules to run Office.

Skype is even more fun to watch in Little Snitch with all of its p2p connections. I regularly have 2k+ connections being opened to sync online state.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#197

Post by eistrati »

javajosh wrote: post #195
mikemcquaid wrote: post #193

I'm the maintainer who added this. I apologise for the poor communication. I would have responded sooner but I've been on a plane for the last 10 hours. I'd hoped the documentation would have made clear our reasons for doing this but I feel the discomfort so since getting off my flight I've opened and merged three PRs ( https://github.com/Homebrew/install/pull/42 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/143 https://gith…

It should be opt-in, not opt-out.

I second that. It must be an opt-in feature.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#198

Post by hnhnhn3 »

hk__2 wrote: post #144
jsmeaton wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah it’s not implemented yet. We’re doing it incrementally and actually started shipping the first bits one month ago (but it was opt-in for tests). Bottling the most used options is something we’re really excited both as maintainers and users and is IMO the number 1 reason these analytics will benefit everyone. We’re currently looking how it behaves and will add them soon.

The biggest benefit of this change is getting people to reconsider their usage of homebrew. For example, now I'm looking into Nix. These sorts of changes fuel competition and innovation.

I'm reminded of when Adblock Plus went sour, and we got uBlock Origin. There are lots of examples of this.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#199

Post by toomuchtodo »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #193

I'm the maintainer who added this. I apologise for the poor communication. I would have responded sooner but I've been on a plane for the last 10 hours. I'd hoped the documentation would have made clear our reasons for doing this but I feel the discomfort so since getting off my flight I've opened and merged three PRs ( https://github.com/Homebrew/install/pull/42 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/143 https://gith…

I'd encourage you to keep the opt-out setting as-is. It clearly brings value to the development team, you're communicating it to users, and Homebrew users who aren't comfortable with opt-out can a) disable analytics or b) not use Homebrew. Switching to opt-in is going to greatly diminish the dataset you'd have for making improvements (selection bias).

The Homebrew developers' time is valuable, versus a subset of users making demands of a free tool. You've been conservative in how clients are identified, as well as the data collected, and people are still suggesting unreasonable alternatives. Can't make everyone happy. Thanks for an awesome tool.

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