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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

#241

Post by astrange »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #202
cstrahan wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember when everyone switched to Homebrew because Fink/macports were "antiquated", a.k.a. not written in Ruby? Yes, I must admit I chose the word "antiquated" quite intentionally, as Homebrew seems to get so much attention (for now) because it's written in Ruby and the website ( http://brew.sh/ ) is shiny, rather than technical merits. > It was nice back then. Packages didn't install themselves in /usr/local. You…

That's the purpose of /usr/local. /nix/store? Really? You can't just make up new root level directories. That's so wrong.

The purpose of /usr/local is for you to put stuff there, but it actually causes a lot of problems if a package manager does it.

- your work-issued laptop might have work stuff installed in there, and the package manager will overwrite it

- build-from-source package managers like fink/ports/brew are incapable of controlling themselves and always install things you didn't ask them to

Since /usr/local is in the default search path for your compiler, that last one means your personal configure script runs are not reproducible, and you'll start linking to packaged versions of libiconv or whatever without meaning to, and your code won't work on other machines or it'll crash unexpectedly.

Fink invented /sw for this, MacPorts uses /opt which I think they got from Solaris?

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#243

Post by cellularmitosis »

isomorphic wrote: post #116
x0x0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm really having trouble understanding this (and I appear to be in a very very tiny minority). Why would it bother you if homebrew devs and Google knew which packages you had installed?

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#244

Post by fit2rule »

throwanem wrote: post #49
fit2rule wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'll confess that this is a real deal breaker for me personally .. I'll be having a closer look at ports and maybe fink soon. Maybe after all its time to get off OSX and back to Linux, where these sorts of things happen less frequently ..

If it means that much to you, why not add host file entries to point GA's DNS records at 0.0.0.0 or something else invalid? If you don't trust that either, supplement it with packet filter rules to drop traffic heading to the IP addresses to which those names (currently) resolve. Switching platforms seems like a major overreaction here.

Its a huge hassle, and I don't want to have to keep fighting the battle against this policy. So I'll just rather switch.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#245

Post by fit2rule »

0x0 wrote: post #73
mikeryan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assume "NO_ANALYTICS" would mean "no analytics" not "no google analytics?

Who knows!? This marks quite a change in attitude where the end user is suddenly responsible for staying on top of newly silently introduced opt-out settings. I'm pretty disappointed and feel the amount of trust I've had in the maintainers have dropped considerably. Sneakily sending random HTTP requests to third party analytics services and stuffing my dotfiles with unique identifiers for tracking purposes is not wha…

>This marks quite a change in attitude where the end user is suddenly responsible for staying on top of newly silently introduced opt-out settings. I'm pretty disappointed and feel the amount of trust I've had in the maintainers have dropped considerably.

I agree with you. I'd much rather have this be out in the open - like, ever 5th time I run 'brew' or something, it asks me for permission to send analytics, and the options are "YES-once, YES-Always, NO-NEVER", and if I say NO, NEVER, it never asks me again.

If spying on me can be automated, so can not spying on me.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#246

Post by cellularmitosis »

faizanbhat wrote: post #200

Honest question for people who are opposed to this update and think it should be opt-in: what do you see as the downsides or pitfalls of sending anonymised usage info to Homebrew / Google Analytics?

I really wish people would explain their reasoning here. I guess I just don't understand why handing a list of installed packages to Google is not my interest. Everyone in this thread seems to be just assuming that everyone else is already onboard with this reasoning.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#247

Post by fit2rule »

madeofpalk wrote: post #13
fit2rule wrote: post #8

Wish there was a way of opt'ing-out without having to set an env var for every session .. is there some brew place to put ENV vars?

That's what ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile or (whatever it is for your shell) is for.

Yeah, I don't want to do that every single time I put home-brew on a machine somewhere, for every single user.

Doesn't it have its own global config? I confess that I'm too miffed by this intrusion in my privacy to be bothered to find out ..

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#248

Post by fit2rule »

abjorn wrote: post #16
fit2rule wrote: post #8

Wish there was a way of opt'ing-out without having to set an env var for every session .. is there some brew place to put ENV vars?

Couldn't you just put it in your .bashrc?

For every user on this machine? On every Mac in the house? Meh.

What I want:

  "brew disable analytics"
There, now I don't have to think about it any more, nor maintain a .profile/.bashrc, nor do it every single time for every user.

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#249

Post by fit2rule »

atm0sphere wrote: post #12
fit2rule wrote: post #8

Wish there was a way of opt'ing-out without having to set an env var for every session .. is there some brew place to put ENV vars?

pls go ahead and read the first response: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/117467/how-to-perman...

This is a very single-user-centric view. Some of us have Macs with many hundreds of users.

And so .. It is too invasive of my .bashrc/.profile that I have to use it to disable spy activity. I'd rather brew just have its own flag somewhere that says "Don't ever send analytics, ever, for any user on this system.."

Re: Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

#250

Post by hk__2 »

Touche wrote: post #178
hk__2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I wrote we’d be very grateful if you had any suggestion.

Have you tried getting donations for the project? Have you tried joining a foundation that supports open source projects (like Apache)?

Yes we recently joined the Software Freedom Conservancy so we can now accept donations.
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