This is not new, it's been around since 2016: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/commit/1238c65ba14831bc571c...
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720
User hostile patterns should be raised and addressed. This is not user hostile in my opinion (considering the very little data collected, and the efforts to anonymize), it is plainly obvious what data is collected, you can observe what data will be sent, you can opt out of data collection (which the devs find of value), and you can choose not to use the software.
It has clearly not had an impact on usage of the tool:
I think we've reached an impasse. Fundamentally, it's brew's project, not the user's, and my opinion is that the brew project has met the burden of attempting to balance their needs (data collection) with those of their users (privacy). It is very easy to dictate a mandate when it's not your time. Compromise is necessary, inevitable even.
> "grandstanders"
If someone would like to donate your time, effort, and funds to standing up analytics infra solely for Brew's use (or perhaps in aggregate for a group of OSS projects) so that they could avoid communicating with Google infra, I fully support such efforts. Historically, I have not seen this occur when a group takes issues with activities of an open and/or free project and the project has offered to accept the necessary resources from those who desired to be stakeholders via their input.
You should not make software that abuses the human rights of your users.
If you bought a plain old alarm clock and it silently connected to wi-fi and told the manufacturer every time you were in the room with it via a motion sensor, without notifying you when it did so or asking you if you want that, you would call that a defective product, and you would say that the front of the box, that says nothing about being a tracking device, is fraudulent.
It’s the same with a package manager, or any other software tool. Tracking in this way without consent is not acceptable, even if there is some fine print on the back of the box that tells you about it.