6 ms·

I'm the maintainer who added this. I apologise for the poor communication. I would have responded sooner but I've been on a plane for the last 10 hours. I'd hop

I'm the maintainer who added this. I apologise for the poor communication. I would have responded sooner but I've been on a plane for the last 10 hours. I'd hoped the documentation would have made clear our reasons for doing this but I feel the discomfort so since getting off my flight I've opened and merged three PRs (https://github.com/Homebrew/install/pull/42 https://github.com/Homebrew/install/pull/42 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/143 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/143 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/146 https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/146) to better communicate this to our users on installation and `brew update` before any information is sent and ease the opt-out process.

javajosh 11y ago
It should be opt-in, not opt-out.
- eistrati 11y ago
  I second that. It must be an opt-in feature.
  - shizcakes 11y ago
    I don't see why; you're tracked like this on nearly every website you visit unless you opt out. This isn't malicious.
    - couchand 11y ago
      That doesn't follow. The fact that many websites do this doesn't prove that it isn't malicious. It may not be (it probably isn't), but that has little to do with the complaints made about the change.
      - pessimizer 11y ago
        Since more people downvoted you than upvoted you, that proves that when most websites do something, it can't be malicious when an application on your computer does it. I think?
      - developer2 11y ago
        Not even your IP address is recorded. It's physically impossible for this to be malicious. There are no real privacy advocates complaining here, only people who post "it must be opt-in!" as an instant reaction to just reading the term "opt-out". Most of the complaints are probably from people who have never even used homebrew. The submission headline contains the phrase "Google Analytics", which attracts the people who always come to criticize the tool rather than actually analyzing how the tool is being used in each case.
        pessimizer 11y ago
        I think the phrase you're looking for is "no true privacy advocates."
        pdkl95 11y ago
        > It's physically impossible for this to be malicious. It's "physically impossible for Google to read the IP header addresses if the pack data contains "&aip=1"? The IP is still logged with Google, according to their own documentation[1]: When present, the IP address of the sender will be anonymized. So-called "anonymized" data can be re-correlated with the original values. DJB's gave a great description[2] of this problem, right after he started working for Verizon[3]: Hashing is magic crypto pixie-dust, which takes personally identifiable information and makes it incomprehensible to the marketing department. When a marketing person looks at random letters and numbers they have no idea what it means. They can't imagine that anybody could possibly understand the information, reverse the hash, correlate the hashes, track them, save them, record them. [1] https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters#aip https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... [3] If you don't believe that DJB works for Verizon, ask the man in the middle... who may have been making an elaborate joke.
        developer2 11y ago
        >> The IP is still logged with Google, according to their own documentation Not quite[1]. The full IP never makes it to disk. It's true that "anonymous IP" isn't as anonymous as I'd have expected. Only the last octet of an IPv4 address is removed. Considering homebrew's use specifically, not just looking at GA in general, I think this is acceptable. [1] https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en
    - chr4 11y ago
      Opt out is the problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11572181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11572181
    - davesque 11y ago
      Yes, but those are websites. Some degree of tracking is vital to the functioning of many websites. e.g. No cookies, no sessions (generally speaking). Furthermore, it is expected that a lot of websites are tracking you. I feel pretty safe in saying that most developers do not expect a command-line tool to phone home without saying, especially if this behavior was introduced in an update for a tool which didn't do that historically (and without any notification of the change). Considering the popularity of this tool, it's a bit shocking that the core dev team of Homebrew didn't seem to anticipate that people would be upset by this. It really knocks my trust in and willingness to depend on this project.
- developer2 11y ago
  Man, the privacy critics really come out of the woodwork every single time "opt-out" is mentioned, regardless of the actual facts for a specific situation. The developers explicitly state they set the anonymous IP address flag. There is nothing that links back to you as a person. Are you really concerned that the developers know which packages a random, unknown person has installed? Crying "opt-in" to every single little thing that has ever tracked you for non-nefarious reasons completely detracts from the cases where tracking is nefarious. Homebrew is not tracking for ads. They are not tracking for anything worth selling to a 3rd party. They're not - and are incapable of - linking this to any other database that does contain personally identifiable information. There's no "profile" worth anything to anybody except the developers, who are trying to get some very basic information completely detached from any identity. >> You will be notified the first time you run brew update or install Homebrew. >> to opt-out of Homebrew's analytics you may set HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1 in your environment They went to the lengths to document this. And to notify you when you run the software. You have the opportunity to opt-out of something that is completely harmless. There is no valid reason to be crying foul over this. Of all the tracking that goes on with our internet connections, this should by far be the least of anyone's concerns. I have uBlock Origin installed in Chrome. With all the ad networks and analytics scripts blocked. Google Analytics does not run in my browser. And yet, I am not even slightly opposed to homebrew's use of it. It's actually anonymous, unlike how many developers use GA in the browser (tracking IP addresses, custom fields like user ids that link back to the site's database, etc). God speed, homebrew devs.
  - alirazaq 10y ago
    If you can't verify that Google are actually anonymizing the data then you can't claim this is "completely harmless". I don't trust Google and this requires me to. Is that unreasonable to you?
  - peterwoo 11y ago
    If all this is true then why even go to the trouble of supporting opt out? The support for opt out acknowledges (implicitly) that the choice to upload data is rightfully the user's own prerogative. Then paradoxically enables the feature by default anyway and places the switch behind some esoteric opt out commands.
- cat-dev-null 11y ago
  Opt-in, like optional security, rarely gets used.
  - sqldba 11y ago
    That's not a user problem.
    - cat-dev-null 11y ago
      It most certainly is if support is focused on the wrong packages and features because they don't have the data to make informed decisions.
      - nerdponx 11y ago
        By that logic, CPython should track usage stats too.
        masklinn 11y ago
        It does to a very limited extent, in that pypi collects downloads statistics.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
I'd encourage you to keep the opt-out setting as-is. It clearly brings value to the development team, you're communicating it to users, and Homebrew users who aren't comfortable with opt-out can a) disable analytics or b) not use Homebrew. Switching to opt-in is going to greatly diminish the dataset you'd have for making improvements (selection bias). The Homebrew developers' time is valuable, versus a subset of users making demands of a free tool. You've been conservative in how clients are identified, as well as the data collected, and people are still suggesting unreasonable alternatives. Can't make everyone happy. Thanks for an awesome tool.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  Nobody is "making demands"
  - niels_olson 11y ago
    > it must be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11568404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11568404
    - akerro 11y ago
      That's a strong suggestions of what is expected by users.
geoelectric 11y ago
Thanks for the changes!
lawnchair_larry 11y ago
Change it to opt-in, please.
bogomipz 11y ago
But why not make it "opt out" by default and then ease the ability to "opt in?"
cat-dev-null 11y ago
Please leave it like countries with good organ donation opt-out policies. Speaking of which, become an organ donor if you live in an opt-in country.
- speeder 11y ago
  Like in Brazil, where there are real cases of people convicted of murdering donors to sell their organs to rich people?
  - cat-dev-null 11y ago
    Third-world country edge-cases. Murder is still murder. The preponderance of donations in first-world countries saves lives, but is so rarely done despite the pressing demand. When you or family member needs a life-saving transplant, which system would you want?
    - tremon 11y ago
      The one where the organ was freely and explicitly offered, not harvested from a person who might have mistakenly believed their body would still be theirs in death.
sneak 11y ago
Why are you even collecting this information? Homebrew isn't some for-profit product trying to optimize its funnel. Keep doing what you were doing. You were doing a great job. There is no benefit to you or us to silently spy on us.
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  From the GitHub doc[0]: > Homebrew is provided free of charge and run entirely by volunteers in their spare time. As a result, we do not have the resources to do detailed user studies of Homebrew users to decide on how best to design future features and prioritise current work. Anonymous aggregate user analytics allow us to prioritise fixes and features based on how, where and when people use Homebrew. I read this as: "Google Business Development contacted us and offered us a sum of money for high-privilege-level analytic data on developers." I would have rather homebrew extended the donation coffer cup on line 0 every time "brew update" or "brew install foo" was called. Much like how Wikipedia ends up getting me to donate each year. Part of me wonders if this was my fault for not donating. [0] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/Analytics.md https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/share/doc/homeb...
  - soared 11y ago
    How the hell did you get that? They don't have money for market research so an easy/free alternative is GA. You assumed because they use GA that Google paid them off? That is absurd.
    - FilterSweep 11y ago
      Homebrew is an OSX packages manager. Take a look at the vested interests of Google prying into high permission level access of Apple devices. This is not the same implementation as simply hitting a page in your browser with the GA script.[0] [0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-walked-away-from-iad-to-starve-googles-core-business-into-irrelevance-2016-1?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-walked-away-from-iad-to...
username223 11y ago
> I apologise for the poor communication. Try apologizing for your poor behavior. You didn't "communicate poorly;" you offended people who used your software, and betrayed their trust. You can either make this thing opt-in, or "ease the opt-out process" and continue being a jerk.
- ctvo 11y ago
  Feeling this betrayed and entitled over anonymous analytics in an open source project?
  - bm5k 11y ago
    When it's not opt-in, yes. As developers, we should know better.
  - username223 11y ago
    I personally don't care about the tracking, since I don't use homebrew, but corporate f-you non-apologies annoy me. No one is complaining about "poor communication;" they're complaining about a feature they dislike. An actual apology would be something like "I apologize for adding this feature, and I am removing it."
KenoFischer 11y ago
Since there is a lot of negative comments here, let me add the counterpoint here that I am totally fine with this. For me, any time saved by enabling you guys to build better software is well worth it. Thanks!

javajosh 11y ago

It should be opt-in, not opt-out.

eistrati 11y ago
I second that. It must be an opt-in feature.
- shizcakes 11y ago
  I don't see why; you're tracked like this on nearly every website you visit unless you opt out. This isn't malicious.
  - couchand 11y ago
    That doesn't follow. The fact that many websites do this doesn't prove that it isn't malicious. It may not be (it probably isn't), but that has little to do with the complaints made about the change.
    - pessimizer 11y ago
      Since more people downvoted you than upvoted you, that proves that when most websites do something, it can't be malicious when an application on your computer does it. I think?
    - developer2 11y ago
      Not even your IP address is recorded. It's physically impossible for this to be malicious. There are no real privacy advocates complaining here, only people who post "it must be opt-in!" as an instant reaction to just reading the term "opt-out". Most of the complaints are probably from people who have never even used homebrew. The submission headline contains the phrase "Google Analytics", which attracts the people who always come to criticize the tool rather than actually analyzing how the tool is being used in each case.
      - pessimizer 11y ago
        I think the phrase you're looking for is "no true privacy advocates."
      - pdkl95 11y ago
        > It's physically impossible for this to be malicious. It's "physically impossible for Google to read the IP header addresses if the pack data contains "&aip=1"? The IP is still logged with Google, according to their own documentation[1]: When present, the IP address of the sender will be anonymized. So-called "anonymized" data can be re-correlated with the original values. DJB's gave a great description[2] of this problem, right after he started working for Verizon[3]: Hashing is magic crypto pixie-dust, which takes personally identifiable information and makes it incomprehensible to the marketing department. When a marketing person looks at random letters and numbers they have no idea what it means. They can't imagine that anybody could possibly understand the information, reverse the hash, correlate the hashes, track them, save them, record them. [1] https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters#aip https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... [2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#bernstein https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... [3] If you don't believe that DJB works for Verizon, ask the man in the middle... who may have been making an elaborate joke.
        developer2 11y ago
        >> The IP is still logged with Google, according to their own documentation Not quite[1]. The full IP never makes it to disk. It's true that "anonymous IP" isn't as anonymous as I'd have expected. Only the last octet of an IPv4 address is removed. Considering homebrew's use specifically, not just looking at GA in general, I think this is acceptable. [1] https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en
  - chr4 11y ago
    Opt out is the problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11572181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11572181
  - davesque 11y ago
    Yes, but those are websites. Some degree of tracking is vital to the functioning of many websites. e.g. No cookies, no sessions (generally speaking). Furthermore, it is expected that a lot of websites are tracking you. I feel pretty safe in saying that most developers do not expect a command-line tool to phone home without saying, especially if this behavior was introduced in an update for a tool which didn't do that historically (and without any notification of the change). Considering the popularity of this tool, it's a bit shocking that the core dev team of Homebrew didn't seem to anticipate that people would be upset by this. It really knocks my trust in and willingness to depend on this project.
developer2 11y ago
Man, the privacy critics really come out of the woodwork every single time "opt-out" is mentioned, regardless of the actual facts for a specific situation. The developers explicitly state they set the anonymous IP address flag. There is nothing that links back to you as a person. Are you really concerned that the developers know which packages a random, unknown person has installed? Crying "opt-in" to every single little thing that has ever tracked you for non-nefarious reasons completely detracts from the cases where tracking is nefarious. Homebrew is not tracking for ads. They are not tracking for anything worth selling to a 3rd party. They're not - and are incapable of - linking this to any other database that does contain personally identifiable information. There's no "profile" worth anything to anybody except the developers, who are trying to get some very basic information completely detached from any identity. >> You will be notified the first time you run brew update or install Homebrew. >> to opt-out of Homebrew's analytics you may set HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1 in your environment They went to the lengths to document this. And to notify you when you run the software. You have the opportunity to opt-out of something that is completely harmless. There is no valid reason to be crying foul over this. Of all the tracking that goes on with our internet connections, this should by far be the least of anyone's concerns. I have uBlock Origin installed in Chrome. With all the ad networks and analytics scripts blocked. Google Analytics does not run in my browser. And yet, I am not even slightly opposed to homebrew's use of it. It's actually anonymous, unlike how many developers use GA in the browser (tracking IP addresses, custom fields like user ids that link back to the site's database, etc). God speed, homebrew devs.
- alirazaq 10y ago
  If you can't verify that Google are actually anonymizing the data then you can't claim this is "completely harmless". I don't trust Google and this requires me to. Is that unreasonable to you?
- peterwoo 11y ago
  If all this is true then why even go to the trouble of supporting opt out? The support for opt out acknowledges (implicitly) that the choice to upload data is rightfully the user's own prerogative. Then paradoxically enables the feature by default anyway and places the switch behind some esoteric opt out commands.
cat-dev-null 11y ago
Opt-in, like optional security, rarely gets used.
- sqldba 11y ago
  That's not a user problem.
  - cat-dev-null 11y ago
    It most certainly is if support is focused on the wrong packages and features because they don't have the data to make informed decisions.
    - nerdponx 11y ago
      By that logic, CPython should track usage stats too.
      - masklinn 11y ago
        It does to a very limited extent, in that pypi collects downloads statistics.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

I'd encourage you to keep the opt-out setting as-is. It clearly brings value to the development team, you're communicating it to users, and Homebrew users who aren't comfortable with opt-out can a) disable analytics or b) not use Homebrew. Switching to opt-in is going to greatly diminish the dataset you'd have for making improvements (selection bias). The Homebrew developers' time is valuable, versus a subset of users making demands of a free tool. You've been conservative in how clients are identified, as well as the data collected, and people are still suggesting unreasonable alternatives. Can't make everyone happy. Thanks for an awesome tool.

bogomipz 11y ago
Nobody is "making demands"
- niels_olson 11y ago
  > it must be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11568404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11568404
  - akerro 11y ago
    That's a strong suggestions of what is expected by users.

geoelectric 11y ago

Thanks for the changes!

lawnchair_larry 11y ago

Change it to opt-in, please.

bogomipz 11y ago

But why not make it "opt out" by default and then ease the ability to "opt in?"

cat-dev-null 11y ago

Please leave it like countries with good organ donation opt-out policies. Speaking of which, become an organ donor if you live in an opt-in country.

speeder 11y ago
Like in Brazil, where there are real cases of people convicted of murdering donors to sell their organs to rich people?
- cat-dev-null 11y ago
  Third-world country edge-cases. Murder is still murder. The preponderance of donations in first-world countries saves lives, but is so rarely done despite the pressing demand. When you or family member needs a life-saving transplant, which system would you want?
  - tremon 11y ago
    The one where the organ was freely and explicitly offered, not harvested from a person who might have mistakenly believed their body would still be theirs in death.

sneak 11y ago

Why are you even collecting this information? Homebrew isn't some for-profit product trying to optimize its funnel. Keep doing what you were doing. You were doing a great job. There is no benefit to you or us to silently spy on us.

FilterSweep 11y ago
From the GitHub doc[0]: > Homebrew is provided free of charge and run entirely by volunteers in their spare time. As a result, we do not have the resources to do detailed user studies of Homebrew users to decide on how best to design future features and prioritise current work. Anonymous aggregate user analytics allow us to prioritise fixes and features based on how, where and when people use Homebrew. I read this as: "Google Business Development contacted us and offered us a sum of money for high-privilege-level analytic data on developers." I would have rather homebrew extended the donation coffer cup on line 0 every time "brew update" or "brew install foo" was called. Much like how Wikipedia ends up getting me to donate each year. Part of me wonders if this was my fault for not donating. [0] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/Analytics.md https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/share/doc/homeb...
- soared 11y ago
  How the hell did you get that? They don't have money for market research so an easy/free alternative is GA. You assumed because they use GA that Google paid them off? That is absurd.
  - FilterSweep 11y ago
    Homebrew is an OSX packages manager. Take a look at the vested interests of Google prying into high permission level access of Apple devices. This is not the same implementation as simply hitting a page in your browser with the GA script.[0] [0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-walked-away-from-iad-to-starve-googles-core-business-into-irrelevance-2016-1?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-walked-away-from-iad-to...

username223 11y ago

> I apologise for the poor communication. Try apologizing for your poor behavior. You didn't "communicate poorly;" you offended people who used your software, and betrayed their trust. You can either make this thing opt-in, or "ease the opt-out process" and continue being a jerk.

ctvo 11y ago
Feeling this betrayed and entitled over anonymous analytics in an open source project?
- bm5k 11y ago
  When it's not opt-in, yes. As developers, we should know better.
- username223 11y ago
  I personally don't care about the tracking, since I don't use homebrew, but corporate f-you non-apologies annoy me. No one is complaining about "poor communication;" they're complaining about a feature they dislike. An actual apology would be something like "I apologize for adding this feature, and I am removing it."

KenoFischer 11y ago

Since there is a lot of negative comments here, let me add the counterpoint here that I am totally fine with this. For me, any time saved by enabling you guys to build better software is well worth it. Thanks!