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uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

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Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#221

Post by ToucanLoucan »

ndriscoll wrote: post #200
totallynothoney wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more, fellow authentic consumer! As a completely real person with no vested interests, I must say this resonates with my genuine, unprompted experience. Thank you for sharing your totally unscripted thoughts!

This but unironically. Why would an authentic consumer care whether the right shill gets paid, and be upset that instead some other party does and they get a discount or cash back? Do all of the upset people work in ads or ad-adjacent industries or something? Are the "influencers" (i.e. propagandists) trying to manufacture outrage and make it seem like normal people care? Please think of the spammers!

I consider myself pretty normal, and I care, just because... I dunno, I appreciate honesty? Especially in our modern world where it increasingly feels like every individual person and every company is out to fuck every other person/company for every last nickel and dime they can manage? And like, this is pretty scummy. If I get sent towards a given product because someone I follow recommends it, yeah I want that person getting their pay for that. I don't give a shit how little it is. They were approached or they approached this company, offered to rep the product, did the work and showed it, and clearly they did a good job, because I watched it and used their link.

Like I don't particularly like sponsored segments, but I know why they exist: because ad revenue on YouTube is fickle and pretty shit, and I enjoy the creators I follow and want them to keep making stuff, and making stuff costs some combo of time and money. So yes, I want the creator to get that.

I think most normal people would vibe on this train of logic. I don't view and never have viewed business, including my own, as a cutthroat competition between me and everyone else. I view it as mutuality of purpose. I offer my work, and people who need stuff done that I can do, give me money. I think if the broader markets had an attitude like that instead of chasing every last penny at every single intersection, then we'd live in a better world.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#222

Post by josephg »

twostorytower wrote: post #201
josephg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a Honey-specific problem. You didn’t just say that. You said a whole lot of other things. You lead with the fact that it’s well known within the industry. The implication of your comment is that the companies did nothing wrong, and people are idiots for not knowing this stuff before. If that’s not your stance, you should make your stance more clear. If you instead…

People should also be angry at all these other extensions and companies, they’re complicit and just as bad. But the source of change needs to come from the affiliate networks, who dictate the rules.

The source of change should come from influencers - who shouldn’t promote this stuff. From honey, who shouldn’t steal money, lie about their business practices and steal people’s code. And it should come from Google and Firefox who allow extensions like this in their stores. And from consumers who install this crap.

> So are there some problems with the affiliate industry? Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely unfair and lacks critical thinking.

It is a scam. It’s an industry wide scam. Calling it out is important because it’s the calling out of shady practices which puts pressure on industries and people to change.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#223

Post by ndriscoll »

totallynothoney wrote: post #213
ndriscoll wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This but unironically. Why would an authentic consumer care whether the right shill gets paid, and be upset that instead some other party does and they get a discount or cash back? Do all of the upset people work in ads or ad-adjacent industries or something? Are the "influencers" (i.e. propagandists) trying to manufacture outrage and make it seem like normal people care? Please think of the spammers!

The problem is that beyond stealing the affiliate rev, which might matter if you actually like the person (like project farm for me), Honey is in bed with merchants and will give negligible discounts or nothing depending what the store wishes. The whole "scrapping the internet for coupons" is practically speaking a lie. Also even if you don't give a shit, reduced affiliate revenue means that creators are more likely…

Obviously the correct solution is to spread the word about ublock and sponsorblock (and perhaps adnauseum) too. Help contribute to a better society by making advertising a less viable way to make money. If something is worth paying for, pay for it. Push the incentives toward honest practices. Don't white knight when shills play themselves.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#224

Post by canucker2016 »

mirashii wrote: post #180
canucker2016 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's correct. GPL is called a viral license. Any project that you add GPL code to must be licensed under GPL (and made available to others under the GPL guidelines). That's why many commercial companies don't include GPL code - see Apple. LGPL is typically meant for code packaged as a standalone library called from other, possibly non-GPL, code. You can distribute and call LGPL code from your code but your code does…

> That's why many commercial companies don't include GPL code - see Apple. This is wrong in a couple ways. First, Apple ships plenty of GPL code. https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/bash/blob/bash-13... as an example. What Apple does not ship is GPLv3 code. GPLv3 had two major changes around patents and "tivoization". The tivoization clause in particular forces changes that break Apple's security model for the…

Thanks for the correction.

This points to one area of Apple's use of GPL code. Apple doesn't want code licensed under GPL v3+ so they're sticking with the GPL v2 codebase (and custom-backporting bugfixes?). Apple uses Bash v3.2, GNU Bash is at v5.2.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#225

Post by asadotzler »

twostorytower wrote: post #201
josephg wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a Honey-specific problem. You didn’t just say that. You said a whole lot of other things. You lead with the fact that it’s well known within the industry. The implication of your comment is that the companies did nothing wrong, and people are idiots for not knowing this stuff before. If that’s not your stance, you should make your stance more clear. If you instead…

People should also be angry at all these other extensions and companies, they’re complicit and just as bad. But the source of change needs to come from the affiliate networks, who dictate the rules.

I imagine you'd get farther with your arguments if you started with those parts instead of what sounded like a full-throated defense of one bad actor by claiming they're forced to be bad by circumstances.

Don't hate the player, hate the game is fine if you say it up front. If you leave it for a comment buried down below you just look like a shill to all the people that read only one or two levels deep.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#226

Post by ndriscoll »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #221
ndriscoll wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This but unironically. Why would an authentic consumer care whether the right shill gets paid, and be upset that instead some other party does and they get a discount or cash back? Do all of the upset people work in ads or ad-adjacent industries or something? Are the "influencers" (i.e. propagandists) trying to manufacture outrage and make it seem like normal people care? Please think of the spammers!

I consider myself pretty normal, and I care, just because... I dunno, I appreciate honesty? Especially in our modern world where it increasingly feels like every individual person and every company is out to fuck every other person/company for every last nickel and dime they can manage? And like, this is pretty scummy. If I get sent towards a given product because someone I follow recommends it, yeah I want that pers…

A paid "recommendation" is dishonest to begin with, and is taking advantage of misplaced trust/parasocial relationships. An honest relationship would involve asking viewers/readers/listeners to support them directly.

I offer my work for money. I don't work for free and tell clients "hey you should support me by using AWS (who will give me kickbacks) for your infrastructure." The conflict of interest is fundamental to such an arrangement, even if disclosed. Instead my employer pays me for my expertise and I do my best to give them my honest, unbiased experience/opinions/analysis. I'm explicit about the boundaries of my knowledge/experience.

Case in point: these "influencers" obviously did not do any due diligence on what this program was doing. They "recommended" something they didn't understand because they were paid to do so. If this were "merely" stealing user information (the monetization method someone else in the thread said they assumed), would there be controversy? What exactly did the people who recommended this thing think it was going to do to the people who installed it? That's the actual story here (though it should be unsurprising).

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#227

Post by exe34 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #219
tikhonj wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL does the exact opposite of copyright; the fact that it uses copyright to achieve that is just an implementation detail. If you believe information should be free to share and remix, you would believe that copyright infringement is not theft and that not releasing code is wrong. The fact that the proprietary code is based on GPL code just shows that the ex-Honey folks are hypocrites: they're trying to use copy…

The gpl sets terms, employing the right to set terms. The fact that those terms are not for money is the implimentation detail. The fact that there are terms that you are required to agree and adhere to, OR live without the goods, that is not. Just like the normal terms for money, your choice is you can take it according to the terms, or leave it. Not just take it and ignore the terms. It's definitely a special level…

> It's definitely a special level of low to steal something that's already free

stealing from the commons, basically.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#228

Post by asadotzler »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #119
lotsofpulp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original post I responded to mentioned “testers”, presumably employees of the business, and therefore, this would be an employee insubordination problem for the employer to deal with, if the employee shares something they should not. > Consider a scrap dealer accepting a clearly stolen catalytic converter Why? I don’t see where the claim is being made that Honey/Paypal is accepting clearly stolen coupon codes.

As mentioned, if honey did a reasonable amount of verification that the coupon could rightfully be shared for some definition of reasonable they could make the case for innocence. They should be able to provide evidence of this. There are external testers as well as many other reasons to issue one off coupons to third parties. So the presumption that an employee of the company has permission to act as an agent of a c…

They ask the user first. That's all they need to do. "Do you have the right to share this? Great, let's go!" That's plenty. If you're asking them to do more, you're wildly out of touch with how any of this works.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#229

Post by exe34 »

josefx wrote: post #211
mathstuf wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can still want much looser copyright. For example, 14 years by default, pay $$ to extend it, increasing exponentially each time (as compensation for stealing from the public domain). At least I'm willing to call extended copyright terms stealing if we're going to call format shifting and other personal use cases stealing.

> pay $$ to extend it, increasing exponentially each time Doesn't work with DRM protected media. Version 1 will be pulled from circulation shortly before the time runs out, version 2 will be slightly altered and qualify for a brand new 14 year copyright. Buyers of version 1 will not receive any refunds and will be expected to pay the full price for version 2.

version 1 is now in the public domain - What's the issue?

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#230

Post by exe34 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #207
mathstuf wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can still want much looser copyright. For example, 14 years by default, pay $$ to extend it, increasing exponentially each time (as compensation for stealing from the public domain). At least I'm willing to call extended copyright terms stealing if we're going to call format shifting and other personal use cases stealing.

> stealing from the public domain How is it stealing from the public domain if it’s intellectual property you’ve created? Do you also believe I should be entitled to a cut of your paycheck?

> Do you also believe I should be entitled to a cut of your paycheck?

don't you benefit from taxes?

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