Comment by danso
8 years ago
Yeah, I was wondering if Kite had a deliberate strategy to inject themselves into popular IDE-plugins, and their hiring plan includes reaching out to such creators. It's not unthinkable that they would slip in such an obligation after the contract is signed. I mean, we're talking about a company that conspired to covertly slip in these dark-pattern ads into mainstream open-source plugins. Ideally, the minimap creator could have taken a moral stand and quit, but I imagine his work situation and prospects (being from Europe) is different than if he were a developer in the Bay Area.
This would actually be a smart and ethical strategy, if the changes were made in a way that they were opt-in and clear about what they were doing. Unfortunately it looks like they got greedy, and this is what happens when you dance the line: much easier to cross it.
While I could see how it can be done in a way that isn't outright unethical, it still strikes me as 'wrong' in the sense that it betrays my expectations of how open source works and relates to for-profit endeavors.
There's no implementation I can think of where I wouldn't feel icky about this, even if the 'Kite update' did absolutely nothing without turning it on explicitly through some setting that I actively have to look for (so no 'would you like to opt-in' screen' at all).