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Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

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Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#51

Post by rhizome »

zokier wrote: post #38
avaer wrote: post #14

> Let’s be clear: the absolute last thing we wanted was for someone’s code to get synced to our servers without their knowledge. I don't buy it. The UX was dark-patterned to enable this very thing, and this reads like damage control when it's clear it wouldn't fly under the radar. If it were the last thing Kite wanted, there would be a big warning that this option uploads your code to their servers. Or some mention o…

> Or some mention of the upload at all The image they show in the post shows that they were fairly clearly saying "Where enabled, your code is sent to our cloud": https://kite.com/static/media/autocomplete-python-flow.690d3... Sure, it is not exactly hilighted there, but I wouldn't say that they were trying to hide that either.

Their entire permissions messaging is encapsulated in the user connecting the presence of the word "enable" in both the description and on the button. That's it.

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#52

Post by nostradamnit »

We're sorry? start by changing this

https://github.com/kiteco/atom-plugin/blob/master/LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2017 Manhattan Engineering, Inc - All Rights Reserved

Reproduction of this material is strictly forbidden unless prior written permission is obtained from Manhattan Engineering, Inc.

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#53

Post by conradk »

jdiaz5513 wrote: post #20

At companies like my former employer, developers were given the power and responsibility to vet their own tools. Despite somewhat strict compliance needs we were able to allow junior developers to customize their own IDEs and plugins, since personalization is crucial for productivity. One of those compliance needs was, crucially, that _source code in its full form must not leave the developer's machine except en rout…

We've seen it happen before though: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source-softwar...

This problem applies not only to editor plugins but all sorts of things nowadays: npm packages for Node.js devs in particular seem like a great way to get viruses, given how hundreds of dependencies get pulled in, sometimes to save 2 or 3 lines of code. Here is an example in the Node package for Postmark (an email service provider) which had a dependency for literally 4 lines of code: https://github.com/wildbit/postmark.js/pull/14/files

As developers, we need to be willing to reinvent the wheel when needed, instead of blindly installing dozens of 3rd party packages. And we should vet things we install no matter what.

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#54

Post by frenchman99 »

ivanbakel wrote: post #27

An apology that starts with 4 paragraphs of self-congratulation is not a real apology at all. Nothing of the article reads as being genuinely regretful of the strategies taken - it's just sorry for being caught. >Unfortunately, while trying to make programmers’ lives a little less complicated, we instead made them more complicated. Barely an admission of guilt, and even that can't get past without patting themselves…

The 2nd sentence is an apology: "Over the last few days, Kite has been knocked around in social media (and the actual media) over several moves we made to expand our user base. It was a humbling experience, and I’d like to apologize to the entire open source community for our handling of these projects."

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#55

Post by mustacheemperor »

ivanbakel wrote: post #27

An apology that starts with 4 paragraphs of self-congratulation is not a real apology at all. Nothing of the article reads as being genuinely regretful of the strategies taken - it's just sorry for being caught. >Unfortunately, while trying to make programmers’ lives a little less complicated, we instead made them more complicated. Barely an admission of guilt, and even that can't get past without patting themselves…

The completely unpenitent doublespeak eliminated any remaining faith I had in this company's ethics. At the start of this controversy I thought it was at least possible the founders somehow just didn't think through the decision adequately, but they aren't willing to accept and apologize for reality.

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#56

Post by hsod »

I generally think HN'ers are too quick to boycott, but this seems like a level of malicious action that will be very difficult to recover from, both for Kite and it's principals (including the maintainers who sold out their user base).

Taking over an unrelated open-source project and attempting to monetize it's users (without being very open about what you're doing) is unethical in and of itself.

Using dark-pattern UX to manipulate those users into making poorly-informed decisions is even worse, and doing it in a way that potentially violated privacy and confidentially expectations is even worse than that.

I admire the commenters here who chalk this up to an honest mistake, but my viewpoint is a bit more cynical than that. The most likely truth is that knew what they were doing, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway because it benefited them.

Now they come out with a self-congratulatory crisis management non-apology which seeks to minimize their bad actions at every turn. I'm not buying it.

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#57

Post by hsod »

I generally think HN'ers are too quick to boycott, but this seems like a level of malicious action that will be very difficult to recover from, both for Kite and it's principals (including the maintainers who sold out their user base).

Taking over an unrelated open-source project and attempting to monetize it's users (without being very open about what you're doing) is unethical in and of itself.

Using dark-pattern UX to manipulate those users into making poorly-informed decisions is even worse, and doing it in a way that potentially violated privacy and confidentially expectations is even worse than that.

I admire the commenters here who chalk this up to an honest mistake, but my viewpoint is a bit more cynical than that. The most likely truth is that knew what they were doing, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway because it benefited them.

Now they come out with a self-congratulatory crisis management non-apology which seeks to minimize their bad actions at every turn. I'm not buying it.

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#58

Post by gus_massa »

nostradamnit wrote: post #52

We're sorry? start by changing this https://github.com/kiteco/atom-plugin/blob/master/LICENSE Copyright (c) 2017 Manhattan Engineering, Inc - All Rights Reserved Reproduction of this material is strictly forbidden unless prior written permission is obtained from Manhattan Engineering, Inc.

From "Update LICENSE" (2017-01-13) https://github.com/kiteco/atom-plugin/commit/fc1b1ab6efafcd4...

> -The MIT License (MIT)

> +Copyright (c) 2017 Manhattan Engineering, Inc - All Rights Reserved

> -Copyright (c) 2013-2016 Kite & contributors.

> -

> -Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy

> [...]

IIRC this is perfectly legal with the MIT license. But legal doesn't mean community friendly or a good idea.

Edit: Ups. I forget:

> -The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all

> -copies or substantial portions of the Software.

Re: Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

#60

Post by holtalanm »

rhizome wrote: post #49
holtalanm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"emotional response"? really? I'm not masking anything. If you would like to read between the lines, then by all means, feel free. I'm looking at this whole situation without passing any judgement. Looks to me like we have a classic case of a company completely failing to execute properly on an idea. Did they fail? Yes, spectacularly. Was there malicious intent, or some form of intentional shady practice going on? I…

You are absolutely passing judgement when you equate the blowback against Kite with extrajudicial (and mostly racist) murder. That you doubled down in your flagged comment instead of acknowledging the (being charitable) hyperbole raises questions about your judgement. No offense. That said, by deed and by words (per their apology) they executed on an "ends justify the means" business model. They wanted more business,…

'equate the blowback against Kite with extrajudicial (and mostly racist) murder'

I didn't say anything about race anywhere. way to read between the lines again and attempt to make my original comment look WAY more inflammatory than it actually was.

I was more equating it to large groups of people getting up-in-arms and angry without actually taking a step back and looking at the whole situation.

To say that is a lynch-mob mentality is 100% accurate.

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