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Homebrew 4.0.0

brew.sh

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Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#51

Post by bdsa »

aa-jv wrote: post #12

I wish we could get the industry to understand that when you build-in analytics and make it hard for people to opt out, you're using their resources. Sure, people don't pay for things like Homebrew (can they even?) - but this is no reason to extract resources from end users without their consent or agency. I have to work very hard to get something like Homebrew installed and in-use in my organization - the IT guys de…

> the IT guys detest it, since they don't have the wherewithal to understand it (or else they'd be higher-paid developers)

seems like an unfair characterisation (having been both!)

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#52

Post by acdha »

tambourine_man wrote: post #7

I use homebrew like a black box. I’m glad it exists, but I have no idea how it works and why it’s so complicated. When something breaks and Google is no help I just nuke it and start from scratch. It’s only happened twice in more than a decade, but I still have the feeling that I was better off compiling stuff manually and cultivating a tidy /usr/local/bin like I did in early 2000s. But it’s probably rose-colored gla…

I think you’re right about the rose-colored nostalgia: it’s easy to forget how far behind people got on updates. I remember so many support emails where someone had hit a bug which had been patched a year earlier but never thought to install it. A couple of times where people reinvented something which had been added to PHP in the meantime because they didn’t know it was there.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#53

Post by Gigachad »

Mystery-Machine wrote: post #27
aa-jv wrote: post #12

I wish we could get the industry to understand that when you build-in analytics and make it hard for people to opt out, you're using their resources. Sure, people don't pay for things like Homebrew (can they even?) - but this is no reason to extract resources from end users without their consent or agency. I have to work very hard to get something like Homebrew installed and in-use in my organization - the IT guys de…

Isn't it illegal, under GDPR, to track users without their consent?

Only if it’s personally identifiable information. You can track anonymous statistics as much as you want without requiring permission.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#54

Post by gizmo »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #39
Mystery-Machine wrote: post #33

I despise, despise, Homebrew's "we know better than you" approach to always installing the latest versions of every dependency. How tf is this fine? They don't even offer alternative. They just say "we can't test all of the packages installed and all version combinations, so this is the best we can do". Well, no one asked you to test my exact setup. All I'm asking for is: if I have perfectly working Node 18 and I nee…

You could always manage your packages and their dependencies yourself. Or you could release a new package manager which does provide support for that functionality, build out a team of maintainers, and stay on top of all the releases

That's like saying "if you don't like your country, start your own". The goal isn't to abandon homebrew, but to have it not break things all the time.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#55

Post by jeroenhd »

st3fan wrote: post #28

Before this whole threads turns into a misinformed rant fest about opt out telemetry: “Homebrew gathers anonymous aggregate user behaviour analytics using Google Analytics (until our in-progress migration to our own InfluxDB). You will be notified the first time you run brew update or install Homebrew. Analytics are not enabled until after this notice is shown, to ensure that you can opt out without ever sending anal…

That's opt-out, though? It's nice that they tell you, but they don't give you a choice. They're just warning you that you need to opt out. That's not the same as opting in.

They're also claiming to log anonymous data while the data they collect is actually pseudonymous as its tied to your specific machine/user, which means it has a whole different status in different privacy jurisdictions. It seems like they could make the data collection anonymous relativelt easily if they just stop tracking individual user installs, though.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#56

Post by callahad »

Mystery-Machine wrote: post #33

I despise, despise, Homebrew's "we know better than you" approach to always installing the latest versions of every dependency. How tf is this fine? They don't even offer alternative. They just say "we can't test all of the packages installed and all version combinations, so this is the best we can do". Well, no one asked you to test my exact setup. All I'm asking for is: if I have perfectly working Node 18 and I nee…

I've been using Nix (and, occasionally, MacPorts) instead of Homebrew for a few years now. Works great, and doesn't have that particular issue. If Nix seems like a bridge too far, the Devenv project offers some nice, lightweight porcelain atop the raw Nix experience.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#57

Post by aa-jv »

bdsa wrote: post #51
aa-jv wrote: post #12

I wish we could get the industry to understand that when you build-in analytics and make it hard for people to opt out, you're using their resources. Sure, people don't pay for things like Homebrew (can they even?) - but this is no reason to extract resources from end users without their consent or agency. I have to work very hard to get something like Homebrew installed and in-use in my organization - the IT guys de…

> the IT guys detest it, since they don't have the wherewithal to understand it (or else they'd be higher-paid developers) seems like an unfair characterisation (having been both!)

If glib IT policy gets in the way of development, its a fair characterization imho. Both the Homebrew developers obfuscating their analytics, and IT guys wanting to lock everything down, suffer from the same malady: glibness.

Too many times IT has had authority over development to the detriment of the project. Developers must resist this.

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#58

Post by Lio »

Thanks for the hard work everyone. I've used brew and brew installed software almost everyday since it was first launched way back when.

Mike, Max and the gang have materially improved my life at least, cheers! :D

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#59

Post by prepend »

capitol_ wrote: post #46
pimterry wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in the post: they're intending to drop the GA part entirely within 90 days, and it sounds like the new metrics are entirely anonymous, and so not covered by GDPR etc. IANAL but as far as I can tell that should avoid all legal concerns once GA is gone.

It's hard to send stuff over the Internet without exposing some personal information, like your ip number. I guess they might send it over TOR to get around that.

Isn’t it GDPR compliant if you never store the source ip at all? So from a GDPR perspective there’s no user data to track and remove.

I’m not sure how organizations get audited to prove that they actually do that and that there’s no other way to reidentify users (eg, I download the prepend package every day and that’s unusual enough to link that it’s me, prepend, the author of that package, etc etc).

Re: Homebrew 4.0.0

#60

Post by FnuGk »

tambourine_man wrote: post #7

I use homebrew like a black box. I’m glad it exists, but I have no idea how it works and why it’s so complicated. When something breaks and Google is no help I just nuke it and start from scratch. It’s only happened twice in more than a decade, but I still have the feeling that I was better off compiling stuff manually and cultivating a tidy /usr/local/bin like I did in early 2000s. But it’s probably rose-colored gla…

> It’s only happened twice in more than a decade, but I still have the feeling that I was better off compiling stuff manually and cultivating a tidy /usr/local/bin like I did in early 2000s. But it’s probably rose-colored glasses and I’d definitively never take the time these days.

thats exactly what homebrew does.

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