Thus far the decisions that I feel are user hostile that Homebrew has taken are:
Being overly strict about the format of formulae, there are multiple formulae that regularly need to be rebuilt due to some other formula being updated, which could if it were allowed look into the other formula's definition to find the information they need, but instead need to either be updated repeatedly by hand or use hacky workarounds like nginx saving its configure arguments into a file for other formula to look at. Since homebrew relies on volunteers to update the formulae, it would be better to reduce the work needed from the users, I would think. But I've been told that even bringing that up is not allowed and won't be considered.
The removal of options from formulae was bad for users for obvious reasons, my suggestion would be simply to not do that. Creating and updating a tap to add the option back is more work pushed onto the users. This was rolled out with no notice to people who use homebrew but don't watch every issue and topic in homebrew's various discussion locations.
The removal of not-free-enough licensed formula was also bad for users, even though I know that it was needed to get help from one of your sponsors (probably the Software Freedom Conservancy?) it is still user hostile.
And then there's the fact that I made a frustrated comment on hacker news, a third party site, and got banned from contributing to homebrew over it with no notice or explanation. That really sucks, as the only reason I care what you do to your users is that I like homebrew as a technology, and just want to see it be better.
