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Comment by colesantiago | Hacker News Reader

Just as an aside Tea.xyz is funded by Binance. [1]

Make of this what you will, but I call immediate scam.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220323005603/en/Tea...

EDIT: if you're reading my comment, please see the response from Mike McQuaid, who's the _current_ project leader for Homebrew. It's good to know Max isn't involved over there anymore! Gonna leave my original comment below this line, so that the context still makes sense:

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That fact paired with the fact that the guy behind Tea.xyz is the same as the guy behind Homebrew makes me _really_ distrust Homebrew going forward.

He's taking money from known crypto scammers to launch AI-generated nonsense (the pkgx nonsense from HN the other day) and abusive crypto-monetization patterns (this tea.xyz thing).

His biggest claim to fame was...a ripoff of the Arch User Repository, which is useful, sure, but not something that instills a lot of confidence in the "wants to promote himself off the back of others' work" aspect of his résumé thus far.

Gonna look into good alternatives to Homebrew.

It’s completely unrelated to Homebrew. We have zero connection to anything related to Tea and Max hasn’t been involved with Homebrew for the best part of a decade.

Mike McQuaid, Homebrew Project Leader and Homebrew maintainer for the last 15 years.

Hey, thanks for responding! That's reassuring, but...how much input would Max still have to Homebrew if he chose to "return"? Like, if tomorrow Max decides that Homebrew is a great vector for another crypto scam, will the existing group of maintainers be able (and willing) to reject any changes in that direction?

Yes. Max would have to have all his PRs reviewed until he contributes enough to be a maintainer and then would have to run for any/all committees or the Project Leader role in elections. He has the same chances anyone else on the internet does.

IIRC he stepped away from Homebrew years ago. See https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/graphs/contributors

This is significantly disturbing, as homebrew is one of those "single maintainer load bearing part of the Internet" for many development processes.

Good find.

> March 23, 2022

Looks like this is one of the last turds from the crypto diarrheafest making its way through the pipes. Good riddance.

Grady Booch had something to say about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35220654

Reply on news.ycombinator.com