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Comment by mikevm | Hacker News Reader

That's probably true, but then no one would opt-in.

Or, even worse, there'd be a selection effect where the distribution of people who opt in is skewed from the total distribution of Homebrew users, ruining the dataset for any analysis one might want to do to it. There's a reason that Nielson Ratings collection isn't opt-in.

Funny, it's been quite a few years, but I remember being a Nielson family for a few months, and it was absolutely opt-in. We had to fill out a little booklet with what we were watching and data about ourselves.

You can't opt in to Nielson because they choose who to give the boxes to. Of course it's optional to do it if they do ask you if you want a box.

Although if Homebrew wasn't using Google Analytics, maybe people would. It could just be a "Do you mind sending us anonymous usage data? [y/N]" prompt. Many other apps do something equivalent, and I don't mind giving it to them. The fact that those apps ask in the first place makes me much more amenable to the idea.

"Do you mind" would be counterintuitive. I see analytics and want to respond "n", for no analytics

...which is very telling.

As in, people want privacy at the expense of volunteer time.

Simple solution: Charge people for using Homebrew who don't want to send analytics in, fund Homebrew development with those funds. Otherwise, its an external cost being foisted on the volunteers by developers who want privacy at the cost of additional volunteer time.

EDIT: The tone of this thread is the exact problem with open source projects and participation. "I want a say, but I'm not willing to contribute in any way except use your tool you're providing for free." Sad, but expected.

I think most people aren't concerned so much about sharing usage data. The problem is specifically the way it's being shared via a third party. Other apps ask if I mind sharing some data (e.g., Firefox), and I don't have a problem with that.

Okay. Is everyone going to pony up for a self-hosted analytics box and the time to manage it? No? Of course not. Everyone wants to complain, no one would contribute resources to do it though. Privacy has a high moral value (its free to want it and complain about it), but small economic value (you use Chrome? It sends everything you do back to Google. You'll still use it, because its better than not).

a HN thread is not the appropriate place to ask for resources for a project.

There are many OS projects out there with larger needs than an analytics server that have managed to get the support they need. If resources are an ongoing problem you even have the option of applying to join a free software foundation like Apache that has resources.

> join a free software foundation like Apache that has resources

There's a reciprocal arrangement here. One of the requirements of joining the Apache Software Foundation is using "Apache" when refering to the name of the software product for the first time in a new context, e.g. first mention on a webpage. Apache Groovy was promoted from Apache's incubator last November (2015), so I've been doing just that ever since. Unfortunately, many of the developers who work on Groovy don't bother, availing themselves of those resources but not giving back to the foundation the small amount asked.

Just like open-source doesn't come with warranties from the creator, it also doesn't come with obligations to the end user other than to abide by the license.

You use Homebrew. In return, you send anonymous stats to save the developers time. If you'd prefer not to, set the env var or stop using Homebrew.

Alternatively, fork it, take out the modifications, and run your own version of Homebrew. But that takes time, and effort; that same time and effort homebrew devs are trying to save with a feature. Why is your time as a user valuable but the Homebrew dev's time not?

Not necessarily. Opting in takes effort, and people aren't really seeing any reward, so they would be less likely to take the effort.

You can make it so that opting in and out takes equal effort.

I'd consider it less strong opinions and more power of defaults.

At 193,622 submissions, I wouldn't say "nobody" opts in to popcon:

http://popcon.debian.org/

This is software, they can just ask instead!

Which might break some scripts that expect home brew not to require user input. The right way to do it would be to ask if a terminal was available but in reality, scripts are not careful enough to tell applications that they are in fact headless. I've seen some scripts break under that assumption.

Did it print a warning when upgrading on terminal?

They could have a prompt with a countdown, you opt in it you don't say 'no' after a minute.

That's kinda the point.

... which, if true, tells you something about the value of this 'feature' to the user.

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