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Mozilla Wrongly Accused Sothink Addon of Malware
eldavojohn writes "Mozilla has admitted to wrongly accusing Sothink of distributing a video downloader with a trojan virus as a Firefox addon. From their official blog: 'We've worked with security experts and add-on developers to determine that the suspected trojan in Version 4.0 of Sothink Video Downloader was a false positive and the extension does not include malware.' Before you go download that addon, however, keep in mind that Sothink has come under fire before for GPL violations and dishonesty."
Not more of this shit again.... A Trojan Horse is NOT a virus. It IS malware, but a virus tends to replicate and trojan horses do not, on their own. A trojan horse is just a program is the infection (In that it does something other than wanted or specified, and does so intentionally)
The qualifier was added only in the summary. The quoted part is just: 'We've worked with security experts and add-on developers to determine that the suspected trojan in Version 4.0 of Sothink Video Downloader was a false positive and the extension does not include malware.'
It's all well and nice to apologize, but adding the qualifier makes it sound very insincere. While the company may be guilty of GPL violations, maybe it might be a smidge more tactful and graceful to remind that on a different day.
Missed the nested quotes, my bad. Thank god I don't code at this time of the morning anymore. :D
Whoa there dude! Check your keyboard, somebody might have slipped you a Dvorak.
Intentionally misleading and making a mistake are two different things.
It's all well and nice to apologize, but adding the qualifier makes it sound very insincere. While the company may be guilty of GPL violations, maybe it might be a smidge more tactful and graceful to remind that on a different day.
Yes, I'm certain the tactic of half-truth would work well on the showroom floor at Toyota dealerships.
"Hey, this guy wants to buy a new Camry. Should we tell him about the recall?"
"Nah. Wait until next week, after we get the sale and he's put enough miles on the car. Hopefully he won't have a problem with the pedals."
Sorry, but I'd rather have ALL the information up front to make a fully educated decision.
The qualifier was put in by the submitter, not TFA.
Yes, let's make a special case for GPL, because we have no moral issue at all with stealing software from people who earn money working on proprietary (closed) software and feed themselves and their families with it. Damn them for earning money with writing software!
Many people voluntarily contribute to GPL'd projects without receiving anything in return.
That might be true for many of the irrelevant apps. But things like the kernel, GCC, libc, KDe, GNOME, etc are all mostly developed and maintained by people who are receiving something in return for doing so — a paycheck.
I understand your point about piracy. Pirates are committing a crime by not paying for the software they use. GPL violators, OTOH, are making money without writing code and without giving anything in return. They neither negotiate development sponsorships like RedHat nor pay royalties nor give credit. Which is a more serious crime?
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
No, Linus is the reason why we have Linux. It could've been any other license.
Then it would have died a quick death. See the answer to second question in this Linus Torvalds interview.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
This is the USA, son. Committing copyright violation and selling a million illegal copies of somebody else's software is good for the economy! Pirating even one thing is you refusing your duty as a consumer! Easily 1000x as serious.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Whenever you use the downloader, it goes to their website to display a "Download Started" page, and passes the URL you downloaded as a parameter. Do they have logs enabled on their webserver? I dunno. Better safe than sorry though. Just use FlashGot, the GPL plugin they stole all their code from.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
New? He's got a 0-digit ID -- as do you!
(+1, Disagree)
GPL violators may not be making money. Pirates may make money. The whole thing is a class of violations called "copyright infringement." While making money off of the infringement may increase its severity, it's all pretty well under the same umbrella.
Within copyright infringement is the idea of the value of a work. That is, the amount that it costs to purchase or otherwise legally acquire the software. Penalties are usually assessed keeping the value of the work in mind. Proprietary software usually has a non-zero cost to acquire. GPL software usually has a zero cost to acquire.
So when you ask
Which is a more serious crime?
the courts would probably answer "Illegally copying non-free software."
The Nazis hauled away her "e" in the middle of the night. Nobody has heard from it since.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Still offtopic, but her name was Annelies Frank.
Ann Frank and Anne Frank are both valid spellings of her pet name, although we know her by the latter.
Ann Frank and Anne Frank are both valid spellings of her pet name, although we know her by the latter.
Jonathon can be “Jon” or “John”. Brooklyn can be either “Brook” or “Brooke”. Annelies can be “Ann”, “Anne”, or “Annie”.
Having multiple ways to spell a nickname doesn’t make all of them correct. As far as I know, Anne Frank spelled it with the e at the end.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's even worse when a major anti-virus/internet protection application named after a pioneer of MS-DOS utilities throws a false positive and declares your CSS to be malware.
It depends on how you see things.
One position is all about money. Depriving people of money is bad, if they're not earning money it's not a big deal. I strongly disagree with this one.
Another is if you see it as that copyright gives authors the ability to dictate how their work should be used, and any terms they come up with are equally valid, then all violations are bad, and both regular copyright infringement and GPL infringement are equally serious. It's not about money, it's about doing what the author wishes.
But if you see the GPL as what should exist instead of copyright, then regular infringement isn't a big deal, and GPL infringement is serious.
I should note people make money writing GPL licensed software too. I do.