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Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

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Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#141

Post by josegonzalez »

froh42 wrote: post #129
mikemcquaid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking at the website one of homebrew's developers (or at least the website developers) is based over here in Europe. He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate. Homebrew lead maintainer here. We're chronically understaffed and underfunded. We have analytics so we can make Homebrew better by figuring out how to prioritise security, maintenance and bug fixes on packages based on how much th…

Mike, I'm just saying that you're putting yourself on risky ground, not that I want to do something personally. In fact I'd even consider keeping GA enabled IF BEING NOTIFIED. The current notification is the problem, as it is close to invisble. Hiding output in a long log message is a dark pattern, I think it did not happen out of spite (you just used your normal shell output mechanism to show that). However: Such a…

> Looking at the website one of homebrew's developers (or at least the website developers) is based over here in Europe. He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate.

This certainly sounds like you're advocating for people to - at the very least - harass him.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#142

Post by blub »

jakebasile wrote: post #120

This really doesn't concern me at all. I don't feel I am harmed by Google possibly knowing what software I install, because if anyone wants to look I keep the script that installs it in my public dotfile repo on GitHub. Can anyone explain to me how this could be used against someone? I'm asking completely seriously as I don't see any harm in this no matter how hard I try. Edit: I do agree that the notice should be mo…

It harms everyone because it's one more actor trying to make collection of data look normal, as can be seem from the multiple misguided posts wondering why this is a problem.

It's not normal that software is sending data to some server somwhere by itself by default. Devs used to have some decency and left this opt-in. They see there's little push-back and they're making it opt-out.

Almost all mobile apps and a significant number of desktop apps have analytics now.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#143

Post by pvinis »

tdkl wrote: post #75
pvinis wrote: post #19

Yes we know. brew tells you that. And you can disable it. Data is being sent to Google everytime you do almost anything in almost all websites, using the same technology. So what? Some of the times it's to make the product better, or better targeted. Some other times it's just for spying on the users. Let's stop complaining about stuff that someone does and tell you they do it. There are many more that do the same th…

>Data is being sent to Google everytime you do almost anything in almost all websites, using the same technology. So what? This still doesn't mean we should just shut up and take it for desktop software. What anyone does on its OS shouldn't leave the LAN - same critique stands for recent MS endeavour with Windows 10.

I definitely don't mean that we should shut up and take it. But before we complain about an open source project that maaaaany devs use happily, let's complain about those other cases first, yea?

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#146

Post by arjie »

froh42 wrote: post #38

As I didn't update brew for a long time I did not have the analytics version. So I upgraded to see what happens. In fact it did NOT prompt me when enabling analytics, but it did display a notice (hidden in several hundred lines of output during brew upgrade): ------------------- + 5a9e19f...7f13b37 master -> origin/master (forced update) * [new tag] 0.1 -> 0.1 HEAD is now at 7f13b37 Merge pull request #1562 from wood…

> Looking at the website one of homebrew's developers (or at least the website developers) is based over here in Europe. He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate.

Incredibly shameful comment. Calling for someone to be sued, and then especially targeting someone who'd be vulnerable. Fucking unbelievable. Flagged this hard.

Man, it would be great if analytics couldn't be opted out of and you insane paranoiacs would leave the rest of us normal people alone. Went straight for the nuclear option: litigation.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#149

Post by Udo_Schmitz »

cygned wrote: post #14

This topic has been discussed on The Changelog recently: https://changelog.com/podcast/223 If I recall correctly, opt-out was chosen because they really want/need some analytics data and most of the users would not opt-in.

“they really want/need some analytics data”

Why? For what?

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#150

Post by Chris2048 »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #118
froh42 wrote: post #38

As I didn't update brew for a long time I did not have the analytics version. So I upgraded to see what happens. In fact it did NOT prompt me when enabling analytics, but it did display a notice (hidden in several hundred lines of output during brew upgrade): ------------------- + 5a9e19f...7f13b37 master -> origin/master (forced update) * [new tag] 0.1 -> 0.1 HEAD is now at 7f13b37 Merge pull request #1562 from wood…

> Looking at the website one of homebrew's developers (or at least the website developers) is based over here in Europe. He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate. Homebrew lead maintainer here. We're chronically understaffed and underfunded. We have analytics so we can make Homebrew better by figuring out how to prioritise security, maintenance and bug fixes on packages based on how much th…

How does the status of the project, or your personal affairs, affect design decisions?
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