Minimap plugin for Atom implements ads, refuses to revert, resulting in a fork

https://github.com/atom-minimap/minimap/issues/588

by fooey • 9 years ago

70 22 9 years ago

bobwaycott4• 9 years ago

tl;dr Kite altered the Atom minimap plug-in 3 months ago to inject Kite promotions and links[0]. Users upset. Kite didn’t care and argues users are happy and many/most “find it useful”.

This is how to destroy your credibility as a maker of tools for developers. Lesson Kite should have learned? Do not fuck with [open source] developer tools, especially things people think are core features.

Plenty of arguments in the comments about how it should be its own Kite plugin and people would install it if they wanted it. Instead, Kite injected it into a plugin with 3.5M users. Then they did it to the autocomplete plugin for Python. Then they say it’s only V1, they’ll iterate and improve it, so don’t be mad, okay?

[0]: The commit message actually says “implement Kite promotion”. Pure don’t-give-a-shit.

aorth• 9 years ago

Ads in a text editor? Wow.

ameesdotme• 9 years ago

https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear

You can even monetize your terminal applications!

westmeal• 9 years ago

Now coming to an emacs near you!

Fej• 9 years ago

Sucks, since Kite looks pretty neat.

olodus• 9 years ago

What I don't understand is how they ever thought a plugin for Python code were a good match with such a general purpose plugin as minimap. I use Atom (and minimap) to a lot of different things, Python being only one of them.

EDIT: Seems they were planning on adding more languages down the line. Still, the functionality should have been a plugin. Sadly looking at the way they handled this there is a very low chance I will give them another look down the line when they have implemented languages I currently use.

This seems very clumsly done by the dev and it completly backfired on them. I get that you want to get the word out about your startup but maybe create it as a separate plugin and try to get the word out with a post on the regular minimap page or something. Something much more harmless.

bobwaycott4• 9 years ago

From what I read in the comments, they also did it to the python-autocomplete plugin.

skrowl• 9 years ago

Have you tried VS Code? It's pretty great with Python.

bobwaycott4• 9 years ago

I'll chime in and agree here. VS Code is my go-to editor now for Python, and I'm pretty damn happy with it.

flukus2• 9 years ago

To me this shows a big shift in who is creating OSS software. It's no longer just people with an itch to scratch, it's now corporate and personal advertising. This just happens to be very obvious advertising.

pvdebbe• 9 years ago

But the solutions to adware crap are thankfully legal and trivial.

flukus2• 9 years ago

As long as general purpose computing exists, which is constantly under attack. In a locked down corporate environment for example you will have much fewer options.

dessant2• 9 years ago

Kite reached out to the maintainer of autocomplete-python in private and multiple employees were added to the repository with push rights, Kite integration soon followed. On the issue I've opened [1] only the original maintainer has replied.

[1] https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...

valenceelectron• 9 years ago

Only thanks to your issue I noticed that the main/most active developer of minimap is a Kite employee as well. He also didn't react so far.

diegoperini2• 9 years ago

Can someone point to the pure, ad-free fork?

dessant2• 9 years ago

https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus

https://github.com/mehcode/atom-minimap-plus

diegoperini2• 9 years ago

Appreciated. :)

jondot• 9 years ago

That's it guys. Open source is done. Time to call it something else like Free Software and wait another 10 years until corporates will find a way to invade and monetize it.

PS: I've pushed my first "open source software" to freshmeat, sourceforge, so I'm allowed to be bitter about this.

bluehazed• 9 years ago

freeware?

tradesmanhelix• 9 years ago

This is horrible. Hopefully, the backlash will prompt changes or users will move to other solutions.

In the meantime, installing the fork minimap-plus: https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus.

Minimap plugin for Atom implements ads, refuses to revert, resulting in a fork

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