Comment by danso
8 years ago
Is it splitting hairs to point out that many developers use React who also don't "happily embeds Facebook JS blob/web bug" in their pages? That's the whole point under discussion here, that the spirit and body of open source is that software can be transparently built and maintained for the greater good, and that Kite's quiet, self-serving changes seem to violate what most people consider standard conduct.
How far do you want to take the sins-of-the-creator argument? Does everyone who writes or executes JS become an abettor to Brenden Eich's beliefs on same-sex marriage? How many Internet users are linked to U.S. war actions given DARPA's large role in creating the Internet?
An argument about whether Facebook and Google are evil is out of scope for this thread, but pretty much argued daily in various other daily threads. I think it's possible for people to like corporations and open source, yet find it disturbing when corporations violate community standards of open source.
> How far do you want to take the sins-of-the-creator argument?
Say wha?... I thought I was being clear. Again, Facebook (and Google, et. al.) have built vast empires on mining people's data in the process of them using their software. I'm arguing that, if a person is NOT opposed to this, then they SHOULDN'T be opposed to Kite's or Microsoft's shenanigans with dev tools. Arguing, "if you don't like what Facebook does, don't use it," is exactly analogous to, "if you don't like what Kite did, don't use their plugin."
Either we live in the world where trading our privacy and activity is the cost of using someone else's service or software, or we don't. But, clearly, we do. Arguing against this particular infraction is trying to unring a bell.
"Sins of the creator?..." I swear, sometimes, it's just not worth chewing through the straps in the morning.
OK, it seems like you have a different interpretation of the OP article than I do. You seem to think that people are bothered because a Kite-plugin uses and advertises Kite services. However, that is not the main point of contention. The problem is that a popular plugin that was not previously affiliated with Kite came under Kite's control. Kite analytics/advertisements were then surreptitiously added to the plugins.
When Kite's alteration to the plugins came to light, people took umbrage and stopped using the Kite-controlled version of the plugin. Problem mostly solved, but that doesn't mean people can't continue to criticize Kite for its actions.
If Facebook, which is the official maintainer of React, were to add a line of code that caused all React implementations to add a Facebook button to their webpages, I would bet good money that everyone criticizing Kite here would be ripping on Facebook.