Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a misunderstanding here what the issue tracker is for in Homebrew. In some projects, it's for free-for-all discussion. That's great if those projects want to use it that way. In this issue's case, you have someone in leadership (p-linnane) communicating that work needs to be done, a maintainer (carlocab) communicating what needs to be done to make this change. xtqqczze's attempt to get us to move backwards on…
> There's no point maintaining the illusion that we're soliciting feedback or discussion on the issues tracker when we are not. You could have just said this (maybe you did when linking the code of conduct) instead of writing a paragraph of confrontational arguments and it would have looked way better imho. > You may think it hyperbolic but drive-by negativity by non-code-contributor users is the biggest existential…
Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
221–230 of 301 posts
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#222Protecting the user from things they don’t realize are apps or new apps on general is important. But the amount of overreach in gatekeeper to try and make the failed Mac App Store profitable and milk $90 a year at the expense of apps users want to run is egregious.
The only scenario in which I think it's excessive is broke student devs, not sure if there's a scheme to waive the fee for them.
Not allowing regular folks to run unsigned apps is something I also agree with -though I would love if Apple allowed us to trust third-party root certs so that apps would be both signed and free of Apple's control.
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a misunderstanding here what the issue tracker is for in Homebrew. In some projects, it's for free-for-all discussion. That's great if those projects want to use it that way. In this issue's case, you have someone in leadership (p-linnane) communicating that work needs to be done, a maintainer (carlocab) communicating what needs to be done to make this change. xtqqczze's attempt to get us to move backwards on…
> As to me being a dick: I've been maintaining Homebrew for 16 years. It's used by millions of people. My full-time job has never been doing so and I've never been paid a market rate for my work on it (not that I expect or perhaps even deserve so). My primary concern with Homebrew is keeping the project actually running. This primarily requires the time, energy and work of maintainers doing so in their free time. It…
I'll take critique from other maintainers who have done as much or more open source work for similar returns over similar time periods. Funnily enough, I'm friends with many, and they are supportive the vast majority of the time instead of critical. Maybe that's because they can relate and you cannot.
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a misunderstanding here what the issue tracker is for in Homebrew. In some projects, it's for free-for-all discussion. That's great if those projects want to use it that way. In this issue's case, you have someone in leadership (p-linnane) communicating that work needs to be done, a maintainer (carlocab) communicating what needs to be done to make this change. xtqqczze's attempt to get us to move backwards on…
> There's no point maintaining the illusion that we're soliciting feedback or discussion on the issues tracker when we are not. You could have just said this (maybe you did when linking the code of conduct) instead of writing a paragraph of confrontational arguments and it would have looked way better imho. > You may think it hyperbolic but drive-by negativity by non-code-contributor users is the biggest existential…
Yup, you're right, I should have. We will adjust the CONTRIBUTING.md accordingly.
> If this was true every oss project would either be dead or be entirely comprised of dicks, neither of which are the case.
I didn't say every OSS project, I said projects like Homebrew. I know that Homebrew would be dead without many of my personal interventions. You can believe me or not but, unless you're a Homebrew maintainer, it's unlikely your opinion about what happens behind the scenes is informed.
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#225It seems the maintainers are very eager to lock issues and threads on GitHub that receive any pushback to this decision. Where is this coming from? I thought Homebrew was pro-user software, which requiring Apple's approval to run software on my computer is ostensibly not.
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The important thing for me with this is that it doesnt appear to impact homebrew's ability to download, compile, and install open source software. And that is the main thing I use homebrew for. I believe that is true for most people too FWIW I don't think brew has been compiling on installation even open source things by default for a while now[1]: > Homebrew provides pre-built binary packages for many formulae. Th…
> FWIW I don't think brew has been compiling on installation even open source things by default for a while now For built in formulas, no. For custom ones very much more so. I know I have a bunch I’ll never have bottles for and would thus always be compiled if used.
I do recognize that there's a bit of ambiguity around when the "compiling" happens, since even the binaries being distributed are still being compiled from homebrew's formulas. The main point I was trying to make was that there was a transition from the "compile everything on the user's local machine when installing" model that homebrew started with to "use the pre-built binaries that homebrew has compiled in advance for installing when possible if the user hasn't specifically expressed they want to compile it themselves". To be clear, I think this is a good thing, and it's a pretty huge quality of life improvement, but I've noticed a few times over the years that this change seems to have not been as widely noticed as I'd expect given how visible it seemed to me even as someone who only uses MacOS on my work machines and not my personal ones. I still sometimes get frustrated with homebrew feeling a bit slow compared to my preferred Linux package manager, but overall it's become far faster and less error-prone over the past decade, and I think it's worth calling out efforts they've taken (like pre-compiling and distributing binaries) that have made a noticeable impact.
In some ways, I think I think understanding the previous efforts they've taken might even help explain why they've chosen not to put in the effort to work around the quarantine issues (e.g. by using local signing like some other comments on this story have mentioned); they're a volunteer project that, unlike most standard package manages for Linux distros, are not in a position where they can easily influence the development of the OS features that might be useful for them. It makes sense to me that the most valuable use of their efforts would be on things that aren't swimming against the current of where MacOS is going. Getting to the point where they could have seamless binary installations at all can't have been an easy task, and the infrastructure needed for it takes additional effort beyond the local compilation model (which still exists). If cutting down on the scope in one dimension makes it easier for them to continue providing the overall feature set they have, this seems like a worthwhile tradeoff to me.
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#227My longstanding prediction that Gatekeeper will ever so slowly tighten so that people don't realise like a frog boiled in water is continuing to be true.
It also only applies to casks. If you don’t use homebrew casks, nothing is changing for you.
You can also disable Gatekeeper entirely. It’s very easy.
I don’t see what you think you’re predicting, unless you’re trying to imply that that Gatekeeper is a conspiratorial plot to turn your Mac into an iPhone. I predict we’re going to be seeing those conspiracy theories for decades while it never comes true. Apple doesn’t want to destroy the market for their $5000 laptops so they can sell us a $1000 iPad as our only computing device or send customers to competitors. This is like a replay of the sky is falling drama when secure boot was announced
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
It works until PHP officially EOLs the version. Then brew stops supporting it and you have to install some finicky 3rd party taps/repos to get the older versions. A huge pain... In the real world there are still apps running PHP 7.4 and even older!
I seriously can't accept this as valid criticism. Homebrew not allowing users to install EOL versions of software with no security patches or updates is a _good_ idea. Just because a fraction of a tiny minority needs some ancient version of PHP doesn't make it a good idea.
"pro" users need EOL version support because sometimes some client still didn't want to update his age old web app the newest node or python or whatever. sometimes it's not up to the dev himself, and he needs to make money either way.
so in the end brew makes decisions for the most common denominator, and that will be the user that uses it to install youtube-dl and nothing more.
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
People did realize when the actual Gatekeeper change happened a year ago [1]. But your prediction still holds because frogs do realize when they're boiled in water [2]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/macos-15-sequoia-mak... , https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/06/macos-sequoia-gatekeepe... , https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/08/07/mac-os-15-sequo... . Top HN comment on Sequoia's announcement mentions…
The point is that by the time Gatekeeper closes tight enough that everything must run through Apple and it can't be disabled, most people wont notice and will be stuck with it.
It remains easy to disable Gatekeeper if you want. New MacBooks still allow you to install other OSes, even though that would be trivial to lock down with signed boot requirements.
So far, none of the frog in boiling water predictions have actually come true at all. It’s just people parroting the same conspiracy every time the word Gatekeeper comes up, just like we went through every time Secure Boot came up.
Re: Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software
#230Protecting the user from things they don’t realize are apps or new apps on general is important. But the amount of overreach in gatekeeper to try and make the failed Mac App Store profitable and milk $90 a year at the expense of apps users want to run is egregious.
I personally think $90 per year is reasonable and not 'milking' - I don't think it's large enough to suspect Apple making bank on this, but does represent a certain level of commitment from a dev and prevents users from spamming developer accounts. The only scenario in which I think it's excessive is broke student devs, not sure if there's a scheme to waive the fee for them. Not allowing regular folks to run unsigned…