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TACO Extension for Firefox Forked After Proprietary Update

Posted by Soulskill on from the way-to-commandeer-taco dept.

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."

2 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. GPL better exactly how? by fotbr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google released theirs with the Apache 2.0 license. 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. People didn't like it, and forked the previous version.

    Exactly HOW would the GPL have been better? There's still a fork of the last "good" version, which you can use if you like.

  2. I removed it right away by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The TACO guys did it wrong. First, they changed what the add-on fundamentally did. Second, they slapped their company name all over the thing. Third, they displayed a pop-up after the update. Fourth, they loaded a web page after the update. Fifth, that web page was loaded with lots of "selling" language but no substance.

    They triggered every single warning about malware I have in my brain. I didn't even bother to look into what it was they were trying to sell. I uninstalled the add-on immediately.

    I'd say this is example #1 in the upcoming book, How Not To Commercialize A Firefox Add-on.