Data is being sent to Google on probably every page you browse over the internet. And to 50 other data websites as well.
Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
11–20 of 342 posts
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#12I've seen this crop up a few times recently and a vocal minority seems to panic every time. I ran into it the other day installing pm2 w/ npm which downloads an optional package that they use for analytics
https://github.com/Unitech/pm2/blob/master/package.json#L184
Is the problem that they are using google's service? Is it the tracking that people don't like? Is it the messaging/copy to the users? I'm sure there's plenty of people on hacker news that build analytics software for a living. I've worked on email click and open tracking. Doesn't seem terrible if it helps them build their product.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#13I knew, and I was prompted. I can understand why this might upset people, but for me I hope it will make brew a better product. I'm sure we all know as developers how annoying it can be to not know the problems users have, and what they are using your software for -- that's why most websites have analytics. I'm hoping to add something similar to software I work on, with an opt-out of course. I believe it will help me…
I agree with this. Also note that GA's terms disallow the sending of personable identifiable information so the data they collect has to be anonymous (see https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2795983?hl=en).
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#14This 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.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#15Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#16I've seen this crop up a few times recently and a vocal minority seems to panic every time. I ran into it the other day installing pm2 w/ npm which downloads an optional package that they use for analytics https://github.com/Unitech/pm2/blob/master/package.json#L184 Is the problem that they are using google's service? Is it the tracking that people don't like? Is it the messaging/copy to the users? I'm sure there's p…
You know...you can already get analytics if your mirrors just agree to share logs. It may not be as detailed or complete, for sure, but using another analytical tools does feel a little superfluous.
> Is the problem that they are using google's service?
This is part of it I think. The brew devs get stats, but so does Google which they can aggregate across everything. Standing up your own analytics server/cluster, especially for a project the size of brew, wouldn't be trivial and I can see why they leverage Google's service.
But I can understand people not wanting to have data sent to Google. I moved everything off Gmail to my own E-mail server back in 2013 and moved search to DuckDuckGo.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#17I knew, and I was prompted. I can understand why this might upset people, but for me I hope it will make brew a better product. I'm sure we all know as developers how annoying it can be to not know the problems users have, and what they are using your software for -- that's why most websites have analytics. I'm hoping to add something similar to software I work on, with an opt-out of course. I believe it will help me…
Please make it opt in. If you truly believe people closely read the prompts for having their data harvested, a default to "No" should not impact you at all.
If you don't believe they read the prompts closely, you're an asshole for stealing data by default.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#18This 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 are blatantly admitting they are stealing user data then if they realize most users aren't reading the prompts and accept the defaults (data harvesting in this case).
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#19Yes 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 things without telling you.
Furthermore, now that you know, for brew specifically, will you opt out? Is your brew command history so secret that you care more about noone looking at it than helping making brew better? Chances are you use brew quite often. Chances are brew is not perfect. Will you choose to make its progress slower because of no real security reason?
How do we expect open source to become better if everyone is being a crybaby because brew got a history of how often they do brew update?