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How a VC-Funded Company Is Undermining the Open-Source Community (theoutline.com)

Posted by msmash on from the not-a-feature dept.

Adrianne Jeffries, reporting for The Outline: Is a $4 million venture capital-funded startup stealthily taking over popular coding tools and injecting ads and spyware into them? That's what some programmers fear may be happening. It is one of the most troubling scandals to hit the open-source community -- a robust network of programmers who work on shared tools for free -- in recent memory. It started back in April, when a programmer noticed a strange change to an open-source tool called Minimap. Minimap has had more than 3.5 million downloads, but like many open-source tools, it was maintained by a single person who no one knew much about other than their username: @abe33. At some point, @abe33, whose real name is Cedric Nehemie, was hired by Kite. Kite was started by Adam Smith, a successful tech entrepreneur who raised funding from a slew of big names including the CEO of Dropbox and the creator of WordPress. It is unclear what Kite's business model is, but it says it uses machine-learning techniques to make coding tools. Its tools are not open source. After being hired by Kite, @abe33 made an update to Minimap. The update was titled "Implement Kite promotion," and it appeared to look at a user's code and insert links to related pages on Kite's website. Kite called this a useful feature. Programmers said it was not useful and was therefore just an ad for an unrelated service, something many programmers would consider a violation of the open-source spirit. "It's not a feature, it's advertising -- and people don't want it, you want it," wrote user @p-e-w. "The least you can do is own up to that." "I have to wonder if your goal was to upset enough people that you'd generate real attention on various news sites and get Kite a ton of free publicity before your next funding round," @DevOpsJohn wrote. "That's the only sane explanation I can find for suddenly dropping ads into the core of one of the oldest and most useful Atom plugins." [...] Although Kite has no business model yet, it's widely thought in Silicon Valley that having users is the first step toward profitability. Adding users potentially benefits the company in another way, by giving it access to precious data. Kite says it uses machine learning tactics to make the best coding helper tools possible. In order to do that, it needs tons of data to learn from. The more code it can look at, the better its autocomplete suggestions will get, for example.

84 comments

  1. So? by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Developer shits on own code. Fork it before the ad insert, and keep using it. If you really need it to do your job, either take over the fork, or hire someone else to do it. Is this really rocket-science? And how does this undermine open source? Clickbait headline.

    --
    Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    1. Re:So? by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In this case, it's a shit little package that requires no real maintenance, so forking is an option.

      But what would you say about Firefox dropping sound support (PulseAudio might work on some machines, but not on any I own), degrading the UI to TabsOnTop then Australis, dropping most useful extensions (in FF 57), and so on? Do you, or any small team, have the resources to keep maintaining Firefox? PaleMoon is a proof it's not as easy as it sounds.

      Likewise, when OpenOffice went apeshit, it was saved only by a bunch of companies funding LibreOffice.

      Or, despite MATE being so much better than GNOME, it's the latter that's the default in most distributions.

      "Just fork it" isn't that easy.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:So? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      But what would you say about Firefox dropping sound support (PulseAudio might work on some machines, but not on any I own),

      I'd wonder if it works with apulse, which seems like software well worth improving.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:So? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

      Have you tried spooning it?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why OSS software is so good.

      The licence liberates the software, most importantly, from it's own author.

      People change. They sell out. They become bitter and vengeful. This way their work lives on.

    5. Re:So? by kurkosdr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If your objections run deep into the code or the UI layer, then indeed forking is not an option. The only real option is either finding a new software package or compromising. But if we are talking about a superficial adware addition, then fork, remove adware, push and you are done. At least open source now has a business model that doesn't involve "selling support" (which is something home users don't buy): Sell the open-source project to some greedy company, fork it, use the money to fund further development.

    6. Re: So? by Qbertino · · Score: 1

      [...] "Just fork it" isn't that easy.

      That's the very reason we, in the end, need open hardware to be truly free.

      --
      We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    7. Re: So? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      So what you are saying is that there is a long history of this kind of thing not working for large / important projects as well, and it isn't actually possible to undermine FOSS, which is why the proprietary and anti-FOSS idiots keep trying to come up with bogey man style "avoid Open Source, it could be undermined any time now" non-stories.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    8. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or, despite MATE being so much better than GNOME, it's the latter that's the default in most distributions.

      Shh. Don't tell him some of us like Gnome desktop better.

    9. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I use Firefox with apulse, it works pretty well.

    10. Re:So? by Sebby · · Score: 1

      "Just fork it" isn't that easy.

      At which point you say "Just fuck it".

      --

      AC comments get piped to /dev/null
    11. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't fight profitability, Son. Embrace it. Become. Profitable.

    12. Re:So? by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Just fork it" isn't that easy.

      Nobody said it was. But to steal an expression from 4chan of all places, the open source community is not your personal army. It's got lots of activists and wannabe generals who wants to tell "the community" what to do and by that they mean the rank and file developers because they're too busy leading. To which the developers generally reply that they're doing their own thing for their own reasons and if you're not happy with it, you can fork it and do your own thing for your own reasons. Sure most take input from users and other developers, but only as advice - it's not a democracy.

      The result is that 99.9% of the time it's just a lot of huffing and puffing but nobody willing to actually do the job or try organizing an effort to do the job or it fizzles almost immediately as said person loses interest. The company level is essentially the same, Red Hat, Mozilla and Sun/Oracle/Apache does what they want. They don't owe you a version of Linux/Firefox/OpenOffice that works the way you want. The code is free, but the labor is not so if you want it done differently it's up to you. It's the open source way of saying no. Not proprietary software-no, but as in "you're on your own there buddy".

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    13. Re:So? by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

      From what I can tell, after FF 57 - so long as you are running Nightly or what passes for Aurora now (Firefox Developer Edition, one version behind Nightly proper), you will be "allowed" to continue to use *Legacy Extensions for now.

      * Every single known Firefox extensions, not written by Mozilla for Test Pilot.

      Beyond that, Fuck Mozilla.

    14. Re: So? by Moof123 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You sir do not understand what it takes to make a modern IC.

      If intel hypothetically open sourced a recent i7 layout, HDL code, and synthesized netlist it would not help almost anyone except a direct competitor. Mask sets alone for the current nodes are many millions of dollars (ho-hum 28 nm for example STILL costs well over $1M for masksets alone, 7-10 nm are obscenely more). But it gets worse, intel's masks are only compatible with intel's own fab, so you would have to go re-layout the chip, which is many $M's of man hours of effort. After layout of each block you have to spend many more $M's for the tools to properly extract and simulate each piece to assure it functions at a decent clock rate, as often the testing and verification of digital chip IP exceeds the actual design effort.

      Open source software sort works in large part due to the very low barriers to entry. You can get a cheap PC and a free compiler for well under $1k and get started coding and compiling pretty quick. Getting any hardware running near state of the art takes large teams and deep pockets, and each botched fab run can cost many $M's.

    15. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Likewise, when OpenOffice went apeshit, it was saved only by a bunch of companies funding LibreOffice.

      Excuse me. It 'went apeshit'?

      Because all I remember was some sort of controversy which lead to many of the developers jumping ship.

      The only thing I can glean from Wikipedia was that people thought Oracle was not a good steward for the project, and that alone was the reason for the fork.

      Too bad the fork has such a terrible name. I might use it if it didn't.

    16. Re:So? by stooo · · Score: 1

      >> Too bad the fork has such a terrible name
      Then just fork it and change the name.
      I like that name. Like a lot of other users.

      --
      aaaaaaa
    17. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just whiny pearl-clutching from someone too lazy to take the initiative for themselves. Definitely not news.

    18. Re:So? by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 1

      Fork it after the ad insert, figure out the code that's phoning home, pass it garbage data. It sounds like the analysis is being done non-locally ("in the cloud"), so it sounds like it should be possible to undermine it. If what they're trying to do is build a corpus of data to operate on, poisoned data is going to cost them time and money to filter out.

      I'm sure over time they'll evolve more sophisticated ways to make sure the data is clean, or maybe they'll figure out a way to ask developers first whether or not it's okay to turn on the 'feature'. If they've actually got a useful product, maybe people will use it, but the minimum bar is that they should be asking, or promoting their own open source plugin, not co-opting existing ones.

    19. Re:So? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Thank you! I've never got such high praise!

      I'll be here all week! Try the Tofurky hot dogs!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    20. Re:So? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I use Firefox with apulse, it works pretty well.

      In response to your comment I tried it out on a fresh Devuan install (on i386 - on ye olde single-core atom netbook) and it works fine there.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    21. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Home users do buy support indirectly. Every computer and peripheral my company sells results in serious $$$ going toward a slew of free software projects. Now if we could only get our competitors to not be so shitty and contribute. They're terrible and sell hardware that can't be properly supported and are doing nothing to try and solve the problem (* one exception might apply although I'd say the owner is bat shit crazy and the work is a wasted effort).

    22. Re: So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think that is what he meant. He's probably talking about schematics and building off ICs which we have code for already. There are some for most things.

    23. Re: So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It might be pretty interesting to work out how far a DIY fab project can go, even if it is more practical just to use cheap standardized hardware.

      But, even if only a very limited process can be used, it may still be quite useful for serious projects if assurance about in-spec behaviour of hardware is more important than performance or efficiency - specifically, for handling cryptographic functions.

  2. Fork it! by thadtheman · · Score: 1

    and show the moptherforkers!

    1. Re:Fork it! by adamfranco · · Score: 4, Informative

      It has been done: @mehcode is maintaining a clean fork with additional improvements and no Kite garbage: https://atom.io/packages/minim... https://github.com/mehcode/ato...

      --
      "When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
  3. Is this really worse than "OSS" that... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Injecting ads into the free tools doesn't seem any worse to me than "open source" project companies that ship a free but hobbled "trialware" open source edition and then sell a commercial closed-source solution of the same tool. (This is pretty common with companies/projects that reserve "enterprise" features behind a paid model.)

    1. Re:Is this really worse than "OSS" that... by WarlockD · · Score: 1

      I thought the same thing till they started talking about a python autocomplete tool. They changed it so it defaults to use their "cloud" based engine instead of local. Supposedly there is no notification when you do an update either. Also, I have ad blocker on just because of all the hijacks out there. I can't imaging what someone could do with a built in tool that you "trusted"

  4. It's actually much worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Injecting ads into the free tools doesn't seem any worse to me than "open source" project companies that ship a free but hobbled "trialware" open source edition and then sell a commercial closed-source solution of the same tool. (This is pretty common with companies/projects that reserve "enterprise" features behind a paid model.)

    It's actually much worse, for a couple of reasons.

    1) a fully functional, free tool can become very widely used and relied upon, then ruined by this sort of thing, causing real disruption to a lot of people and/or projects.
    2) it's a bait and switch scheme, promising one thing, then pulling the rug out from under everyone's feet and delivering something suddenly very different
    3) if forced to fork, that eats up a bunch of other folk's cycles and energy for something that should have been totally unnecessary. That's thought and energy that is now unavailable for other projects they would have perhaps preferred to work on, so the knockon effects of this sort of thing can become quite multiplicative (in a negative way)

    At least with crippleware, you know it's crippleware the moment you download it and can remove it (or buy the commercial version if for some reason you're impressed). It may be annoying, but it's a far more honest business model than what these clowns are doing.

    I would consider doing business with an honest company, even if I'm not fond of their marketing approach. Only a fool would knowingly choose to do business with people who engage in these kinds of dishonest bait and switch programs.

    1. Re:It's actually much worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Don't bring reality into the Open Source Reality Distortion Field! Just fork everything and maintain it yourself!

    2. Re:It's actually much worse by PatientZero · · Score: 2

      Even worse, it sounds like the software was inserting ads into the Atom feeds it produced. You publish three new stories on your blog, but the feed has a fourth which is an ad for the software. It would be like gcc inserting display ads into your compiled application.

      --
      Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
      I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
    3. Re:It's actually much worse by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, things are somewhat different for developer tools than they would be for end-user tools. As a developer you can always pull the code for the latest release and comment out annoying bit. Unless the annoying bits are part of some extensive rearchitecting, it should be straightforward.

      Contrary to being "contrary to the open source spirit", this is exactly the open source spirit. I do what the hell I want with my code, and if you don't like it you can change it. For ordinary users the freedom mantra can sometimes ring hollow, but it shouldn't for a developer.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:It's actually much worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or simply find someone who _is_ forking it and buy them a beer... Problem solved. Amazing how a community of people can find someone who does something. Unless in your universe everyone lives on an island isolated from everyone else (wait, does AOL still exist?)

  5. Recent Trend?? by Luthair · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Open source hasn't been a few giant projects in the 25 years I've been programming, its always been tens of thousands of projects often written by one person and very few were vetted.

  6. So wtf is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I ducked it and found no info. Tried package manager but is not there. So wtf does it do?

    1. Re:So wtf is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It shows a thumbnail representation of the source code in place of (/in addition to) the scrollbar.

    2. Re:So wtf is it? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Yuck!!!
      That's one of the recent changes in Kate that I really despise. (Just not enough to even try to fork the source...but enough to avoid Kate.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  7. Only apps can app apps! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is an appy app app for the appy Atom app, so of course it has apps! Only LUDDITES hate apps that app other apps!

    Apps!

    1. Re:Only apps can app apps! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh great thanks. Never thought appy apppie appsy person could be so useful.

            APPS!

  8. CueKite by dcollins · · Score: 1

    For some reason this company with no business model reminds me of the CueCat.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

    --
    We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
    1. Re:CueKite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      CueCat's business model was to give away free hardware and make up for it in volume. X^D
      Seriously, wtf were they thinking?

      At least this company actually has a known business model known as "install malware on popular product, sell user information, and collect ad revenue," (the same business model used by Oracle for Java) so they might actually make money from the poor schmucks that don't realize they've been bait-and-switched.

    2. Re:CueKite by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      That's basically also the business model that CueCat tried to follow: Selling data. Those things had a unique serial number that would allow them to at the very least tell which products were used by a single user.

      What fell them was that people didn't like that idea. They were just ahead of their time, today you could release such a product and the idiots would jump onto it. Do a Facebook tie-in and it's something you can sell to Zuckerberg for a few millions in a week or two.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  9. The "fork it" mentality is killing open source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    This whole "If you don't like some idiotic changes made to a piece of open source software you have to fork it and maintain it yourself!" attitude is killing the open source community.

    It just encourages division and strife, instead of collaboration and progress. Forking should be the last resort.

    What's worse is that for most users the best option is just to find some other alternative. Sometimes this alternative is proprietary.

    Firefox is a great example of this. It has been one unwanted change after another for years and years. Yeah, there have been some forks, but most Firefox users just find it easier to switch to Chrome, Safari, Edge, or some other non-Firefox browser. Now Firefox's share of the market is in the low single-digit percent range.

    Debian is another. Systemd was forced on Debian's users, and this ruined the stability and reliability that many of Debian's users had come to require. Using GNOME 3 as the default desktop doesn't help, either. A small number of people tried to create the Devuan fork, but most other serious Debian users just moved their servers to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and started using FreeBSD or even macOS on their workstations. Now Debian has become nothing more than a Fedora clone, with the main difference being you type "apt" instead of "dnf" to install packages.

    Some people will point to Xorg and EGCS as being cases where forking was good, but I think that's misleading. The forking in those cases only served to set back the development of those projects for several years.

    Telling users to fork a piece of open source software is basically the same as telling them to fuck off and use proprietary software instead.

    1. Re:The "fork it" mentality is killing open source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What FOSS project do you maintain that has all of its users 100% satisfied and who don't have diametrically opposites desires for said software?

  10. I keep hearing that bollocks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But it only seems to be claimed, never supported with reality.

    Or even coherent solid argument.

    This, however, is new:
    "Telling users to fork a piece of open source software is basically the same as telling them to fuck off and use proprietary software instead."

    It is, unfortunately EVEN DUMBER than the claim that being able to fork a project kills FOSS. No, telling users to fork means they do not have to obey the whims of some asshat programmer but can change it, or get it changed, the very selves.

    Is telling someone to get aftermarket shocks for their Ford the same as telling them to fuck off and build their own factory to build a car?

    No.

    It's fucking stupid.

    Just like your version.

    1. Re:I keep hearing that bollocks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I'm not attempting to fully defense the GP, your analogy is flawed because I think you are not fully appreciating the audience. When you tell someone to fork a project you assume they are a developer. You don't make the same assumption for a car. In fact, this is a big problem in OSS because you want to reach the MUCH LARGER user base of non-developers. You'll only do that without telling any of them to fork the software and start doing their own development. So, if OSS is only used be developers, sure, tell them to fork it because it doesn't matter--with so few users whatever happens is inconsequential. If, on the other hand, you tell someone who is not a developer to just fork it, you're tell them to look elsewhere; forking the project is simply not an option.

    2. Re:I keep hearing that bollocks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the analogy is fine.

      The fact of closing down car engine software is an anathema to people because they want the OPPORTUNITY to be able to do car maintenance still. Or pay someone else to do it. Clearly proving the GGP wrong in his "theory".

      The analogy holds because the bare claim that "you can fix it yourself" is bad for software take up is as fucking stupid as the claim that you can fix it yourself is bad for cars.

  11. Seems pretty stupid by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

    Doing anything even partially-censorable in an open-source code isn't precisely a good idea. People would know about it! Mainly in popular repositories with a relevant number of contributors. This is the theory, at least. I have been seeing more and more people mostly interested in talking generally, copy-pasting, relying on a few absolute truths + attacking any idea even slightly different, mainly caring about what their friends say or the number of stars/upvotes, etc.; but not too willing, not looking like being too interested in and perhaps not able to really understand/deliver virtually any sample of even slightly complex code.

    In any case, this seems as a quite bad move: bad publicity for the company supporting it and for the programmer performing the action. Additionally, the impact of whatever fishy goal you might be after is likely to be minimised. On the other hand, I haven't ever done any kind of fishy anything while developing software, so perhaps I am missing some underlying wisdom.

    --
    Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  12. omg... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it's a plugin for atom editor. https://github.com/atom-minimap
    who the fuck cares... real people use real editors... https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs

    1. Re:omg... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you mean https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net of course

  13. Firefox had embedded ads at one point. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    We should never forget that Firefox included commercial advertisements at one point, although they called them "sponsored tiles" instead of what they were: advertisements.

    1. Re:Firefox had embedded ads at one point. by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      You're saying "instead of" like it was some kind of malware or other nefarious product. Sponsored clearly means it's an advertisement. Just like free (to use) web pages have ads, free apps have ads, I don't see why another piece of free software couldn't have ads, and as others have pointed out, if you really wanted to remove them, you could.

      (My favorite device to avoid ads is one that is hated by many open source advocates -- tivo. I rarely see TV ads, since I can skip them, even with features added in the past few years to make ads even easier to skip.)

  14. Sooo Sourceforge 3.0? by bigdady92 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slashdot's ex parent company did that EN MASSE. People think this is a new issue and it's not. Old and dead projects are rewoken with adware built in and sent off to those who mistakenly download it.

    --
    Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:Sooo Sourceforge 3.0? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, it was real shocking when they started serving up installation executables for ZIP archives. Their user-base is the type to be wary about running random stuff.

    2. Re:Sooo Sourceforge 3.0? by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      Have you lived to regret your username yet?

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    3. Re:Sooo Sourceforge 3.0? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you lived to regret your username yet?

      Have you stopped beating your spouse yet?

  15. Re:Natively undermine ads then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dude, even though your content for once fits the topic, please please please learn how to write a god damn post. All that + and & and => blargh

  16. Exactly what guns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Were made to fix.

  17. FOSS licenses need an update! by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    FOSS licenses need an update for this type of shit. Preferably with fines attached for polluting FOSS with adware/ad functions. As soon as AI start coding, this sort of thing is going to get worse by orders of magnitude and we need measures in place to prevent the corps from f*cking things up big time.

    Meanwhile, could someone please hack this guy's/companies accounts and mess up their life big time in a spectacular way as to teach a lesson to the public? I'm usually on the edge when it comes to vigilant hacking, but this is a case where my vote is a clear yay. I presume you're all with me on this one.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:FOSS licenses need an update! by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      You are an idiot. This was done by the original author of the software. You could write whatever you want in your little license and he could take that and inject ads into it. I mean, he could remove that bit and release his software.

      Seriously, man. Turn your brain (back) on.

    2. Re:FOSS licenses need an update! by HiThere · · Score: 1

      While your point is valid, so is the GP's. It's possible that some kind of license could be written that would address this problem, so that certain activities would be promised to never be engaged in by the software. It would need to be originally chosen by the original author, but even so.... I'm not sure how this would work, or how it could be done. I suppose that a "new version has a new license" would be a tip-off that could be used. Even so, it reminds me of the licenses that restrict fields of activity for which the software can be used...not really a free license.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    3. Re:FOSS licenses need an update! by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      If it restricts the copyright-holder's rights, it's not a license -- it's a contract. I suppose the author could sign and notarize a contract with a specific client, but I can't imagine that ever happening without significant payment.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
  18. unclear business model ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It is unclear what Kite's business model is"

    Bullshit. It is VERY clear what kite's business model is: Making money.

    In fact, it's perfectly inline with the core definition of venture capitalism: The art of making money with the work of others.

    i.e. parasitism.

    1. Re:unclear business model ? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Making money is the what, not the how. A business model is the how.

    2. Re: unclear business model ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oooo I know. Putting foss developers on their payroll and have them inject ads into their open source software?

  19. Clean Fork: minimap-plus by adamfranco · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those who use Atom & the minimap plugin, @mehcode is maintaining a clean fork with additional improvements and no Kite garbage: https://atom.io/packages/minim...

    --
    "When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
    1. Re:Clean Fork: minimap-plus by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Plus it appears the code's been backed out: https://github.com/atom-minima...

    2. Re:Clean Fork: minimap-plus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if he reverted the change, IMO the original developer cannot restore the lost faith, so he deserves what's about to happen: all of his users are going to switch to the fork.

    3. Re:Clean Fork: minimap-plus by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Fool me once and all that.

      Tell me one good reason why I should EVER touch a project by that guy again.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  20. Coming to HBO next Spring... by RumGunner · · Score: 1

    This is almost definitely going to be a new plot device on Silicon Valley next year.

    1. Re:Coming to HBO next Spring... by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      Erlich Bachman left the show for good! A terrible lost! One of his funniest performances.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  21. So?-Free...ads. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And how does this undermine open source? Clickbait headline.

    Undermines the idea that one can make money with open source.

  22. Natively undermine ads then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I did it in Opera when it was adware (addons can't outside browsers) via APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    Ads/script & malware rob speed/security/privacy

    Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!

    Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirects (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lightens DNS load & resolves faster from local system RAM!

    * Via what u NATIVELY have in the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/

  23. If this is the worst thing that ever happens by edtice1559 · · Score: 1

    We have great lives. Undermining would be things like intentionally injecting subtle bugs. Or surreptitiously inserting encumbered code. This is pretty much nothing. If the package is the least bit interesting, somebody will create a distribution free of the ads. Or rebrand the package. SourceForge basically tried this when they had no reputation left to lose.

  24. "it appeared to look at a user's code and insert" by mr_mischief · · Score: 3, Informative

    The summary is a bit unclear. The phrasing of "it appeared to look at a user's code and insert links to related pages on Kite's website." reads as if the tool is inserting adware into the projects on which it's used. Indeed, this phrasing is straight from the article. But upon closer reading, it seems the ads are in Minimap's interface as used by the developer. This is a bad thing, but it's not nearly as bad as inserting adware into the projects your users are shipping.

  25. oh, this is going to get ugly... by s1d3track3D · · Score: 1

    it's widely thought in Silicon Valley that having users is the first step toward profitability

    [user@home]$ dig site
    [user@home]$ "Goood Morning, I see your using bash, can I help you with that? - oh and you look hungry, did you eat breakfast? IHOP has breakfast specials this week!"
    [user@home]$

  26. No, it's not users... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Although Kite has no business model yet, it's widely thought in Silicon Valley that having users is the first step toward profitability.

    Customers, not users. Having customers, people who will give you actual cash money, is the first step toward profitability. Without them, you're just farting around, no matter how many users you have. Silicon Valley doesn't seem to understand that part.

    1. Re:No, it's not users... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      First you need a product before you can convince customers, so GP is right.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  27. No, we said source, not sores. by Joviex · · Score: 1

    You know what else is open source?

    MY BALLS!!! Suck 'em, nerds!

    No, we said source, not sores.

  28. Freedom goes both ways... by hackel · · Score: 2

    This is the great thing about Software Freedom and why it is so important. They can put whatever ads they want into it. If the company is the sole contributor, they can completely change the license to fully proprietary any time they want. And we have the freedom to say, no, we don't like what you've done, revert those changes, and distribute our own modifications.

    I don't see this as a problem at all, but rather a good learning opportunity for people. Just because open source doesn't mean you should blindly trust it. You actually have to *look* at that source and make sure it's something you want to put onto your machine. Especially if you are downloading a binary from some random source, you're taking a huge risk. You have no more expectation of privacy just because software is open source, it's just that detecting issues is trivial compared with proprietary software.

  29. Dear unidentifiable no-balls "ne'er-do-well" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject "Yude": Blow yer modpoints till I run you DRY of 'em & I just repost nullifying your effete 'weapon' https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10899111&cid=54867419/ & trust me - you'll lose in the end, losing all your modpoints just as you have now!

    See - unlike MOST ac /. posters (myself id'ing myself unlike a 'brave man' (not), like you & "your kind", skulking worms, lol)?

    I have NO LIMITS on much I can post.

    * That's right - I totally OUTTHINK & OUTSMART those of "your kind" every time, lol...

    (UNBELIEVABLE: You even SAY I am on topic w/ a valid solution & YET YOU DOWNMOD ME?)

    APK

    P.S.=> When "your kind" (lowest of the low do-nothings & LAZY as hell) can manage to create a BETTER program /.ers both LIKE + USE as I have https://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10889141&cid=54846601/ ? THEN, & only then, tell me "how to do things" you lazy do-nothing whimp... apk