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Filezilla installer is suspicious again

forum.filezilla-project.org

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Re: Filezilla installer is suspicious again

#121

Post by Digital-Citizen »

rhizome wrote: post #99
Digital-Citizen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you say is true a more productive approach is to make a derivative of the last known non-malware release of FileZilla with a new name. FileZilla's code respects your software freedom (FileZilla is licensed under the GNU GPL v2, last I knew), so there's no reason not to use that freedom to make a derivative which doesn't come with a tricky installer. Rejecting free software when improvements can be had is an o…

The hard part is search engine ranking.

That's a non-sequitur and not difficult: make the derivative, publish the derivative, and continue to publish the derivative without malware. You'll establish a history people can trust and earn users and search engine rankings in time.

Re: Filezilla installer is suspicious again

#122

Post by Digital-Citizen »

jlgaddis wrote: post #112
rhizome wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part is search engine ranking.

And that little issue with trademarks: https://filezilla-project.org/trademark_policy.php

This is also a non-issue as long demonstrated by Debian and GNU when they distributed Firefox and Thunderbird derivatives under different names with different logos. The section of that page under "Modifications" is quite clear on what needs to be done. Please don't try to invent non-existing difficulties. I realize HN is demonstrably averse to any serious discussion which centers on the importance of software freedom for its own sake but that's no reason to reject leveraging software freedom to improve one's own lot or help others.

Re: Filezilla installer is suspicious again

#127

Post by 0x00000000 »

teraflop wrote: post #86
ourmandave wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its truly amazing to me that installing windows software is still like this. You think this is bad, you should try the Windows 10 auto updater. Disclaimer: It's broken on my brand new PC and no helpful on-line fix has worked so far. So I might hold hate in my heart.

Similar experience here; Windows Update has been completely broken since shortly after I upgraded from Win7 to Win10. It tries to update -- it downloads several GB of patches, reboots and spends about 20 minutes installing -- then it tells me something along the lines of my system being "incompatible" with Windows (I forget the details, it's been a while) and rolls everything back. Every six months or so I let it try…

>rolls everything back

Even better with mine. It rolls the updates back one at a time, rebooting and failing each time then rolling back another in a process which takes several hours to complete

Re: Filezilla installer is suspicious again

#128

Post by jokoon »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #7

It's sad that FileZilla remains so popular long after the creator has chosen to monetize it with adware. I highly recommend any FileZilla user reading this should switch to WinSCP. It's free, open source, and not bundled with any crapware.

I considered using winscp until I discovered it cannot limit itself to 1 connection.

Re: Filezilla installer is suspicious again

#129

Post by Fnoord »

jimnotgym wrote: post #75
belorn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting off platforms is usually quite hard with most trying to be as sticky as possible. The common reason why people tend to stick to Windows is games, even if the situation has gotten better. Personally I have come to the conclusion that the best solution is virtual machines with a linux base system. Put every game that is sticky to windows into its own little container and just have hardware passed through. That…

> The common reason why people tend to stick to Windows is games For home users perhaps. Enterprise users are often locked into ERP clients, for instance, that are Windows only. But the real killer reason enterprises use Windows is Active Directory. Simple GUI SSO and policy based management. For instance I could have a white-list that didn't have this adware on it and could apply it by group-policy...

Active Directory is just a fancy name for LDAP, Kerberos, and DNS (often in combination with CIFS). There's no reason why you cannot use an equiv in a partly or pure Linux/UNIX environment. And indeed, there are many partly Linux/UNIX environments where the servers are running on Linux/UNIX yet the clients are running on Windows. The killer feature of Windows is that people are used to running it as desktop, meaning a less steep learning curve. Another one to add to the list of features is Exchange, but even that has *NIX alternatives.

Re: Filezilla installer is suspicious again

#130

Post by netsharc »

fusl wrote: post #120
giancarlostoro wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest a lot of people wont suspect the main recommended download to be sketchy until it's too late in some cases.

I guess "This installer may include bundled offers." as a warning is not clear enough because it's not written in 72px red-colored bold text? Don't get me wrong, but, in my honest opinion, they make it clear on their own website that it includes bundled offers. I know many other open source projects that offer builds of their software for free, including "bundled offers", without any hint.

Let's try to imagine what his thought processes were. And to do that I would try to put myself in his shoes and imagine what my thought processes would be: "I have this popular software, but I'm not getting rich out of it. What if I put crap adware with it. But that'd be dishonest and I would be helping the scammy/scummy side of the internet (1). Well, if I put a disclaimer on the download page, then it'd be the users' own damn fault if they miss it. And I'll make the download button extra big so they'll think 'I know what I need to do in this page, click' and miss the warning.".

(1) This is what I think about that section of the Internet, remember this is me putting myself in his shoes.

And at first I would feel guilty about scamming my users, but later on I would probably blame them for being stupid. And when others ask questions in the forum I would just reply tersely and arrogantly and say "It's all correct because I wrote a disclaimer.".

So, when you say "They make it clear", IMO that is very arguable. He (is the author of the software the same guy as the forum moderator, I'm getting the impression it's a one-man show) did the least he needed to do to be able to get away with installing crapware on their trusting clients' machines, because his aim is to make money, and he can make more money if less people notice the warning. I'm betting his lawyer told him he should write the warning on the download page, if I were him I would've thought about just putting a "By downloading you agree to the terms and conditions of the software being offered" with a link to a page with a wall of text, but probably his lawyer told him "that might be iffy."

This is a bit like Facebook saying they made it clear that they will copy SMSes and call logs from your phone...

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