Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 329 posts

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#231

Post by peterwoo »

developer2 wrote: post #216
javajosh wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Man, the privacy critics really come out of the woodwork every single time "opt-out" is mentioned, regardless of the actual facts for a specific situation. The developers explicitly state they set the anonymous IP address flag. There is nothing that links back to you as a person. Are you really concerned that the developers know which packages a random, unknown person has installed? Crying "opt-in" to every single li…

If all this is true then why even go to the trouble of supporting opt out?

The support for opt out acknowledges (implicitly) that the choice to upload data is rightfully the user's own prerogative. Then paradoxically enables the feature by default anyway and places the switch behind some esoteric opt out commands.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#232

Post by jxy »

Scarbutt wrote: post #117
rurban wrote: post #53

See, 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.

This statement is false. With only Command Line Tools installed, macports complains, but everything works.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#233

Post by chris_wot »

peterwoo wrote: post #231
developer2 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, the privacy critics really come out of the woodwork every single time "opt-out" is mentioned, regardless of the actual facts for a specific situation. The developers explicitly state they set the anonymous IP address flag. There is nothing that links back to you as a person. Are you really concerned that the developers know which packages a random, unknown person has installed? Crying "opt-in" to every single li…

If all this is true then why even go to the trouble of supporting opt out? The support for opt out acknowledges (implicitly) that the choice to upload data is rightfully the user's own prerogative. Then paradoxically enables the feature by default anyway and places the switch behind some esoteric opt out commands.

You might not support or use Google in any way. There are such people. They use DDG and go to extraordinary lengths to prevent any assistance to Google. I'm not one of those people, but the ability to turn off the feature is reasonable.

Some folks don't trust Google. There might be a case down the road where the U.S. government required access to the data due to National Security. Given how they handled the San Bernadino iPhone incident, it's not like this won't ever happen.

Others believe that Google will use the data for their own ends. In the same way other don't want Googke to become more powerful, others will be concerned that Google uses analytical data like this for their own commercial purposes, and it's not known what this might be.

It also would be a PR nightmare if this wasn't added, even though the data is anonymised to the Homebrew guys. Perception is important also. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't hurt to add this option to Homebrew.

Personally, I'll just leave it on as I don't subscribe to any of the above views, but I'm imaginative enough to see potentially legitimate concerns. :-)

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#234

Post by speeder »

cat-dev-null wrote: post #230
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…

Please leave it like countries with good organ donation opt-out policies. Speaking of which, become an organ donor if you live in an opt-in country.

Like in Brazil, where there are real cases of people convicted of murdering donors to sell their organs to rich people?

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#235

Post by tjl »

santaclaus wrote: post #100
astrange wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when everyone switched to Homebrew because Fink/macports were "antiquated", a.k.a. not written in Ruby? It was nice back then. Packages didn't install themselves in /usr/local.

I left MacPorts because the political infighting between package maintainers often left ports hopelessly out of date.

That's basically the main reason why I left MacPorts. The other was the fact that they'd build their own version of already installed programs. The worst offender for a long time was tetex until they finally added support for looking at an existing tetex installation.

I also ran into a number of broken ports. I had used Fink, but I ran into issues with its packaging too. So, when I heard about Homebrew, I decided to try it. It's been pretty decent for me so I've stuck with it. The only major issue I've had has been related to Octave, but that's been a problem for MacPorts too as the OS X version isn't as up to date as the Linux version at times.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#236

Post by newjersey »

chris_wot wrote: post #233
peterwoo wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all this is true then why even go to the trouble of supporting opt out? The support for opt out acknowledges (implicitly) that the choice to upload data is rightfully the user's own prerogative. Then paradoxically enables the feature by default anyway and places the switch behind some esoteric opt out commands.

You might not support or use Google in any way. There are such people. They use DDG and go to extraordinary lengths to prevent any assistance to Google. I'm not one of those people, but the ability to turn off the feature is reasonable. Some folks don't trust Google. There might be a case down the road where the U.S. government required access to the data due to National Security. Given how they handled the San Berna…

I support opt-in as well. Make it the default option so people can press enter or use -y if you'd like.

I'm thinking along the lines of popcon in Debian http://popcon.debian.org/

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#237

Post by developer2 »

peterwoo wrote: post #231
developer2 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, the privacy critics really come out of the woodwork every single time "opt-out" is mentioned, regardless of the actual facts for a specific situation. The developers explicitly state they set the anonymous IP address flag. There is nothing that links back to you as a person. Are you really concerned that the developers know which packages a random, unknown person has installed? Crying "opt-in" to every single li…

If all this is true then why even go to the trouble of supporting opt out? The support for opt out acknowledges (implicitly) that the choice to upload data is rightfully the user's own prerogative. Then paradoxically enables the feature by default anyway and places the switch behind some esoteric opt out commands.

Because they're not stupid and knew that the first thing out of naysayers' mouths would be "why is there no opt-out?!", which then gets followed up with "it shouldn't even be opt-out, it should be opt-in!". They tried to get out in front of the matter by even bothering to document the use of analytics, and implementing an opt-out mechanism at all. Unfortunately the nefarious ways in which intrusive analytics are used on the web has completely ruined the concept of gathering the most basic analytics in any situation.

They could have just added the analytics without saying anything. Which then leads to a) someone discovering the outgoing analytics request and reporting it on sites like HN, b) them having to defend the use of analytics and PR-fake-apologizing for not disclosing its use up front, c) implementing an opt-out, and then d) dealing with HN reports about it being opt-out instead of opt-in.

The privacy implications of analytics gets blown way out of proportion every time the subject is brought up. There is a huge difference between gathering basic information a la homebrew, and the way the large ad networks track and share your information across every damn website you browse. Yet there is this vocal group of people who treat them equally.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#238

Post by drivingmenuts »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #150
Spivak wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Google the company. 2) GA is not open source nor does it matter when it's your data on someone else's server.

What makes you trust Homebrew over Google? What makes you trust anyone with your data online?

Well, up until now, Homebrew wasn't specifically collecting any information.
Post reply on HN