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I just tried Kite on my Mac, and I was really not pleased with it. Uploading all of your code to the cloud is questionable at best when the code you're working

I just tried Kite on my Mac, and I was really not pleased with it. Uploading all of your code to the cloud is questionable at best when the code you're working on isn't necessarily your own. Having Kite running in the background without a way to disable or uninstall it feels like nothing short of malware. The lack of documentation for how to uninstall Kite from your machine or how to remove your data from their cloud is also pretty worrisome.

stwe 10y ago
The developers of Kite also replaced the functionality of a popular python autocomplete Atom extension from using jedi to Kite without properly warning the users: https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/issues/285 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...
- tedmiston 10y ago
  The CEO's response in that thread is very clear that they added an additional option to use Kite, and did not make Kite the default or replace the default.
  - stwe 10y ago
    I was a happy user of the python autocomplete package with Jedi for some time. Starting in November 2016 they introduced kite-specific code, shipping kite-installer as a dependency and also added tracking of your autocompletion behaviour (I suspect this is where they get their Kite vs. Jedi performance numbers from). Only in February 2017 I noticed that the whole package had changed right under me because of an error traceback window caused by their metrics collection going wrong. I looked at the package settings and IIRC there was a checkmark set for the "Use Kite" option which I'm pretty sure I did not set myself. The telemetry collection alone is a deal breaker for me. But I also don't like the sneaky way they practically took over the package without clear notice and consent. The package README still makes no mention of Kite and the package is running under the innocently looking 'autocomplete-python' GitHub org instead of their 'kiteco' org. To me it's a very fishy 'growth hacking' strategy.
adamsmith 10y ago
Hi, you can uninstall Kite by following the instructions here: http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite
- deprave 10y ago
  Kite feels a lot like malware. It sends your code to the cloud. You have not addressed people's concerns who asked about keys embedded in source code, not entire files to ignore. The uninstall process looks and feels a lot like stopping a rogue process that keeps respawning. You've silently integrated with an unrelated project (autocomplete-python) to collect data. I applaud the idea and UX in the video. I'd love to use a tool that does all that. That said, I completely condemn everything else about you. I strongly recommend anyone who has installed Kite to remove it from their computers immediately as it seems that the people behind it don't have the community's best interests in mind.
  - saghm 10y ago
    > The uninstall process looks and feels a lot like stopping a rogue process that keeps respawning. Not saying I disagree with your main idea, but the uninstall process linked to above seems pretty standard to me.
    - jsjohnst 10y ago
      You normally have to "reboot" [0] to uninstall an app on a Mac? Outside things which installed a Kext, I can't remember ever needing to do that. [0] (Yes, I know launchctl obviates the need to reboot, but their instructions say reboot and that's what we are commenting on here).
      - saghm 10y ago
        I mean, if something is running as a background service, then yes, you either need to manually stop the service or reboot. I guess I don't tend to think of anything running as a background service as malware, although I suppose opinions could differ on this. This could potentially be due to my using Linux as my primary OS though; on OS X, manually managing services is not as common from what I've seen.

stwe 10y ago

The developers of Kite also replaced the functionality of a popular python autocomplete Atom extension from using jedi to Kite without properly warning the users: https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/issues/285 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...

tedmiston 10y ago
The CEO's response in that thread is very clear that they added an additional option to use Kite, and did not make Kite the default or replace the default.
- stwe 10y ago
  I was a happy user of the python autocomplete package with Jedi for some time. Starting in November 2016 they introduced kite-specific code, shipping kite-installer as a dependency and also added tracking of your autocompletion behaviour (I suspect this is where they get their Kite vs. Jedi performance numbers from). Only in February 2017 I noticed that the whole package had changed right under me because of an error traceback window caused by their metrics collection going wrong. I looked at the package settings and IIRC there was a checkmark set for the "Use Kite" option which I'm pretty sure I did not set myself. The telemetry collection alone is a deal breaker for me. But I also don't like the sneaky way they practically took over the package without clear notice and consent. The package README still makes no mention of Kite and the package is running under the innocently looking 'autocomplete-python' GitHub org instead of their 'kiteco' org. To me it's a very fishy 'growth hacking' strategy.

adamsmith 10y ago

Hi, you can uninstall Kite by following the instructions here: http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite http://help.kite.com/article/6-how-do-i-uninstall-kite

deprave 10y ago
Kite feels a lot like malware. It sends your code to the cloud. You have not addressed people's concerns who asked about keys embedded in source code, not entire files to ignore. The uninstall process looks and feels a lot like stopping a rogue process that keeps respawning. You've silently integrated with an unrelated project (autocomplete-python) to collect data. I applaud the idea and UX in the video. I'd love to use a tool that does all that. That said, I completely condemn everything else about you. I strongly recommend anyone who has installed Kite to remove it from their computers immediately as it seems that the people behind it don't have the community's best interests in mind.
- saghm 10y ago
  > The uninstall process looks and feels a lot like stopping a rogue process that keeps respawning. Not saying I disagree with your main idea, but the uninstall process linked to above seems pretty standard to me.
  - jsjohnst 10y ago
    You normally have to "reboot" [0] to uninstall an app on a Mac? Outside things which installed a Kext, I can't remember ever needing to do that. [0] (Yes, I know launchctl obviates the need to reboot, but their instructions say reboot and that's what we are commenting on here).
    - saghm 10y ago
      I mean, if something is running as a background service, then yes, you either need to manually stop the service or reboot. I guess I don't tend to think of anything running as a background service as malware, although I suppose opinions could differ on this. This could potentially be due to my using Linux as my primary OS though; on OS X, manually managing services is not as common from what I've seen.