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TACO Extension for Firefox Forked After Proprietary Update
rtfa-troll writes "Beef Taco is a Firefox extension that allows a mass opt-out from tracking and targeted advertising by many ad networks. The Register reports that the original system, TACO, has become proprietary, and has added new 'features' best described as bloatware. I guess this should serve as a warning for users to always prefer software under a copyleft license where possible. If Google had chosen a license with better protection, such as the GPL, when it released its own opt-out tool, this problem would have been much less likely. This also shows why forks are so important when software development begins to get messy."
Someone else took that, re-wrote (apparently significant) portions and released it with a different name. THAT PERSON then sold it to a company, who then decided to bundle a bunch of for-pay stuff with it.
Had this been GPL, the person who rewrote significant portions of the software would have to have released his derivative works as GPL. He could have sold his portion of the software under any license, but the work as a whole would have to be GPL. The company that bought the rights to the software would have to remove any GPL portion, or release the entire thing (including proprietary addons) under GPL.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Actually, the fork's author only mention about the license in his blog post was:
This classic version didn’t have much to it, and what’s more it was licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. Fork’s Away!
If I read that correctly, he seemed happy about the license only because it allowed him to fork it.
Also, Eric Jung is on their 'Advisory board': http://abine.com/team.php If you don't know who he is, he is a board member of Mozilla Add-Ons governing board.
Wrong. Eric Jung is on the board of Mozdev, and independent organization dedicated to hosting Mozilla-related projects (like a specialized Sourceforge). He is not part of the Mozilla Add-ons team.
I'm in charge of the add-on review process at Mozilla, and I personally reviewed and approved the TACO update due to its complexity. I have no relationship with Abine whatsoever.
The page was wrong, and it looks like they updated it already.
The update was approved because it passes all our quality checks. It is not up to us to determine what features a developer can include or not, and it is not a new thing for an add-on to change hands like this. It is up to the developers (new or otherwise) to give their users what they want. If they screw up, they will lose their users. Our job is to make sure the add-on is safe to use and it does what it claims it does. The new TACO has a ton of new features, most disabled by default, but its core functionality remains.
Most users are complaining about the package size and the new user interface, which are things that won't get the add-on rejected unless they make it unusable, and that it not the case for TACO. I see nothing to be ashamed about.
What I've been trying to communicate here is that it is not our job to judge if an add-on is pretty or ugly, lightweight or bloated, subtle or in-your-face. Our job is to attest for its security, privacy protection, usefulness and ease of use. We reject add-ons that are impossible to figure out, have overly intrusive UI, or are annoying to users. The previous TACO did have some UI, little as it was, and the new one can be configured to be like that.
I know the new TACO is annoying to many, but I'm sure many others think otherwise. It's obvious that many TACO users like the minimalist interface it used to have, and are angered by the change, but that's something that the users need to judge, not us. There's already an alternative available if you want to switch.
And yes, when we say "core functionality", in this case it would mean warning about cookies and other trackers, and providing the means to block them.
FWIW, the people at Abine are well aware of the reception of this upgrade, and are already working on improving it.
http://www.getabine.com/team.php Jules Polonetsky - Co chair of Future of Privacy Forum, which coincidently enough was funded by AT&T. No conflict of interest there. Chief Privacy Officer at DoubleClick, you know, the people who sell lots and lots of adverts on the internet? Seems strange that he would be interested in something that was designed to stop that? Jim Jorgensen - CEO of AllAdvantage, you probably won't remember the name but you probably remember them as the company that tried to pioneer 'Paid to Surf' by bombarding users with adverts. Again, why would he be interested in something designed to thwart that? Why are these people interested in a company that seems to have no others means of making money apart from charging $50 to take down a youtube video? http://www.getabine.com/deleteme/request.php?item=youtube This company stinks, I'll continue digging because I'm sure there's more