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Homebrew 4.0.0

brew.sh

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Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#231

Post by woodruffw »

pdimitar wrote: post #170
lamontcg wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does a package manager need to track their users at all? Do any of you actually work in this industry shipping software products to end users? Without telemetry the problem there is literally one of trying to read the mind of your end users to figure out what they're doing, hoping that your internal CI manages to reflect the configuration in their environment.

Any actual arguments? I don't see why something that's little more than a file server needs telemetry.

Homebrew is a package manager with thousands of packages, not a file server. We maintain those packages, and knowing when they break (or can be deprecated due to lack of use) is critical to the project's sustenance.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#232

Post by mola »

pancrufty wrote: post #212
jillesvangurp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd be well advised to make this opt-in only for legal reasons. This is not going to go down well in a lot of places and they might get exposed to law suits.

Opt-in analytics are useless, unless a large part of your userbase just clicks through the entire wizard without thinking; there’s little overlap with Homebrew’s userbase

Ok, so don't do analytics.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#233

Post by therealdrag0 »

sneak wrote: post #209
yrro wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homebrew should support the DO_NOT_TRACK environment variable. https://consoledonottrack.com/ It doesn't look likely though. I don't think it looks good that comments pointing out that Homebrew's existing behaviour (collecting analytics without obtaining informed consent from users) violates the law have been classified as abuse and hidden! https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/6745

In retrospect (consoledonottrack operator here) I never should have pushed an opt out standard; it legitimizes opt-out which is indefensible and unethical. Opt-in by advance consent is the only way. Homebrew devs are unethical jerks. Use nixpkgs and don't look back.

What’s unethical about counting errors with no PII?

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#234

Post by mdaniel »

mkrishnan wrote: post #138

well, still needs `sudo` :( :(

Aside from what the sibling comment said about the "local" install, if you don't want them to run sudo for you, I'd bet $5 that so long as the directories end up with the permissions necessary, you could (effectively) `alias sudo='env'; brew install` and it'd be fine. I do not have `NOPASSWD` on sudo and I can attest that with all my years of Homebrew and Linuxbrew, it has never once tried to run sudo "under the covers"

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#235

Post by baliex »

t8sr wrote: post #137
baliex wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a staunch macports evangelist but ended up switching to homebrew. I've found it to be much simpler. And, as a counter to your experience of not having it mess up a machine, every time you upgrade macOS to the next major version you have to jump through some hoops to get it to play ball again. Painful. At some point I gave up on the hoops and installed homebrew instead and haven't looked back.

Well, you can nuke macports just by deleting /opt/local. It's annoying to have to recompile for sure, but at least it's a simple solution.

That does sound simple, but is not the process the macports docs suggest.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#237

Post by jicea »

dncornholio wrote: post #221
aliqot wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacPorts makes no effort to not look abandoned. It's very much 'the old way' of doing things from the look of the website to the terseness of the syntax. Before you take offense, I say this as a member of that generation. These days if you have an ugly website, and opaque syntax, you're considered to be an abandoned project. Agree with it or not, your website sends a signal to the user and MacPort's signal says "it'l…

There's nothing wrong with the website though. Ugly is highly subjective

Completely agree, I'm a brew user myself but find the site of MacPorts rather clean and modern. It's responsive and doesn't feel abandoned at all (particularly https://ports.macports.org which support Dark mode). Plus, using brew, I never go to the website so I don't think this is really important.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#238

Post by lvh »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #179
pimterry wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does a package manager need to track their users at all? According to https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics they use it to measure how often formulas fail to install, to get overall metrics on which OS versions are used, and to correlate those (i.e. to tell on which OS versions specific packages fail to install correctly). > A maintainer has no need to know who's installing what Aside from the IP, they don't know who'…

Aside from the IP? IP nowadays is all you need…

They've been quite clear about what they store and it's not IPs.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#239

Post by noptd »

anshargal wrote: post #50

While I use Homebrew on my Mac — it is a major risk. I am afraid that the project is not following strict security policies and will be compromised at some point. Evil package or evil version of brew can steal or modify my data. I think this will also hurt the Mac platform. I wish Apple would invest some effort into building an App Store for cli programs. While it may be complicated for the community(require signing,…

By this logic, the ability to install arbitrary software is a major risk.

I strongly disagree with this stance, and it's a very authoritarian one at that. The common people can't be trusted with freedom so we should give up that freedom and trust in . I find this stance morally repugnant and entirely at odds with where the future of technology should be going.

Tl;Dr: Hard disagree. Some of us prefer to use our computers as general computing devices, as opposed to just being desk-driven iPhones.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#240

Post by noptd »

vorpalhex wrote: post #171
anshargal wrote: post #50

While I use Homebrew on my Mac — it is a major risk. I am afraid that the project is not following strict security policies and will be compromised at some point. Evil package or evil version of brew can steal or modify my data. I think this will also hurt the Mac platform. I wish Apple would invest some effort into building an App Store for cli programs. While it may be complicated for the community(require signing,…

Yes. If you install untrusted code, it can do nefarious things. No platform can save you from yourself.

Agreed. Nor should the platform disallow you from doing so.
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