What did we do? 2023 edition
Published on December 17, 2023 by Colin Dean
2023 was a productive year for Homebrew. Herein are things we did thanks to your generous contributions.
Developments we made
Moved to Influx from Google Analytics
Announced in February and finalized in July, Homebrew moved away from Google Analytics to our own InfluxDB Cloud instance hosted by InfluxData on EU-based AWS servers. This will have some monthly costs once our credits run out, so we’ve allocated funding to cover it.
Improvements to formulae/cask APIs
In addition to signing the content that our APIs return, we’ve also further accelerated the process of getting the latest formulae and cask data. This project was a significant amount of work for several people.
Services we used
Paying for MacStadium
We love MacStadium for enabling our macOS builds. Our usage exceeded what they can provide for free, so we started paying for the extra usage this year.
We love MacStadium for enabling our macOS builds. Our usage exceeded what they can provide for free, so we started paying for the extra usage this year.
Other ongoing relationships
We’ve funded ongoing vendor relationships with Google Cloud Platform for long Linux builds and DNSimple for DNS hosting. We continue to use GitHub for source and site hosting, normal CI, Copilot, and development Codespaces, the latter two for which we pay when we exceed free tier limits.
People we paid
Maintainer Grants
In December 2022, we created a program that pays a monthly stipend to the maintainers who work on Homebrew. This program incentivizes recurring contributors to continue contributing as they take more responsibility within the project. This now includes 29 people eligible, although not all eligible people have taken the stipend. Through much of 2023, this was paid monthly, but as of October, it is paid quarterly.
In December 2022, we created a program that pays a monthly stipend to the maintainers who work on Homebrew. This program incentivizes recurring contributors to continue contributing as they take more responsibility within the project. This now includes 29 people eligible, although not all eligible people have taken the stipend. Through much of 2023, this was paid monthly, but as of October, it is paid quarterly.
Dependency Sponsorships
We halted dependency sponsorships temporarily because of accounting problems that we hope to resolve in the new year.
Hardware Grants
We continued our hardware grants program, which enables maintainers to request new hardware for working Homebrew. We funded the purchase of a FIDO token for one person and a few maintainers are taking advantage of holiday pricing for upcoming workstation purchases.
Things we did
Annual General Meeting 2023
We met at the Thon Hotel in Brussels in February and reimbursed maintainers who attended the meeting in person from several countries. For some, it was their first trip outside of their home continent! Maintainers were reimbursed from the 501c3 organization. You can read the minutes online here.
We met at the Thon Hotel in Brussels in February and reimbursed maintainers who attended the meeting in person from several countries. For some, it was their first trip outside of their home continent! Maintainers were reimbursed from the 501c3 organization. You can read the minutes online here.
On our minds for 2024
Hardware Grants
We may be altering the program to make it more approachable.
Annual General Meeting 2024
We have reserved a meeting room at the Thon Hotel in Brussels in February and will reimburse maintainers who attend the meeting in person. Maintainers will continue to be reimbursed from the 501c3 organization first to continue spending the money we held over from when the Software Freedom Conservancy was our fiscal sponsor.
FOSDEM
We paid for promotional materials for our stand on FOSDEM.