[mescalito]

I normally enjoyed the insight and comments of the thread more than the content of the article and don't comment that much.

But my personal opinion on this, only to share it and be heard possibly by the developers of homebrew, is that I honestly do not care about this. It's nice they are open about it, it's a hell of a tool and hey, if they want to track what I do to improve it, have my data.

I really don't see the opt-in/opt-out debate being so harsh on this. Because it's open source it should be opt-in? I really don't think so. Analytics are a valuable source of information for the developer and google provides a hell of a service for that. And you probably use several closed source tools that track you, sometimes without even telling you. Yes, you can really of external tools to block this, great for all of us those tools exists, you can use it for homebrew as well.

I wonder if all of the opt-in advocates don't use gmail for their email. I am pretty sure they do, and they are not worried about all of the tracking going on there? Or on other apps? Unless you really follow most if not all of stallman's computing principles[1], being furious about this, is, IMHO, disproportionate and a bit ungrateful.

So I am more than OK with opt-out. Nice that you wrote about it, nice that you provide a way to do it, and nice that you use your time to create such a great tool!

Kudos!

[1]: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

[tremon]

Because it's open source it should be opt-in?

Because the sending of data to a third party is not directly related to the functioning of the software.

Analytics are a valuable source of information for the developer

Yet it's not the developer's data, it's the users' data.

you probably use several closed source tools that track you, sometimes without even telling you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

I wonder if all of the opt-in advocates don't use gmail for their email. I am pretty sure they do

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

[mescalito]

Nice links, that's why I like comments.

Ok, let's don't state it as an argument, but rather as a question.

Do anyone that's so much against opt-in is aware of closed source tools that tracks you and use it anyway?

And..

Do you use any third party web service like gmail or any other?

Although I hardly think I'll get an answer from most. At some point you have to make assumptions, wether those are fallacies, ok.

It's true it's not directly related to the functioning of the software, but it improves it in anyway, then there's a connection with it.

I take developer side and I personally look for see the grater good/less harm and compromise.

Opt-in will likely give them very little % of adherence and thus rendering all of this useless. Most of the opt-in advocates have technical capabilities to opt-out in any way (homebrew way, network filters, forking ,etc...). So why not simply letting this go?

I do think homebrew is a rather technical tool so most users are tech savvy guys, but still.

For me, this is pretty similar debate to donating organs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation#Opt-in_versus_o...

And I am 100% an opt-out advocate!

[tremon]

Do anyone that's so much against opt-in is aware of closed source tools that tracks you and use it anyway?

And..

Do you use any third party web service like gmail or any other?

I can only answer for myself, and it's no to both, with caveats. I do have a hotmail account, but I only use it for subscriptions to public mailing lists. I've had it for over 20 years, and stopped using it for private correspondence around 2005. I also have an Android phone, but it's not activated (as in, I never gave it any credentials to log in to any Google services, and I do not have a mobile data plan). Any application I need is sideloaded, or installed with F-Droid.

The rest of my networked machines are running Debian, OpenWRT or NetBSD. I do have a Windows (8.1) VM on my work laptop, but that VM is switched off unless I get paid to use it.

It's true it's not directly related to the functioning of the software, but it improves it in anyway, then there's a connection with it.

It's not a given to any specific user that sharing their data will improve the software in areas that the user cares about. Nor is it a certainty that not sharing leads to the software not improving in those areas.

There definitely is a case to be made that more accurate metrics will allow the developers to make more focused decisions, and I don't think anyone is arguing against that. That's not what the argument is about. The question is whether the developers' need for data is sufficient justification to hand over their users' data to the biggest aggregator of personal data on the planet, and whether it is justifiable to do so without the user's knowledge (the primary reason for opt-in is because it's the easiest way to unambiguously ascertain consent).