4 ms·

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

70 points by fooey 9y ago

bobwaycott 9y 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 9y ago
Ads in a text editor? Wow.
- ameesdotme 9y ago
  https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear You can even monetize your terminal applications!
- westmeal 9y ago
  Now coming to an emacs near you!
Fej 9y ago
Sucks, since Kite looks pretty neat.
olodus 9y 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.
- bobwaycott 9y ago
  From what I read in the comments, they also did it to the python-autocomplete plugin.
- skrowl 9y ago
  Have you tried VS Code? It's pretty great with Python.
  - bobwaycott 9y 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.
    - hgdsraj 9y ago
      PyCharm anyone? Superior to everything else.
      - bobwaycott 9y ago
        Oddly enough, 10 years of Python later, I’ve actually never tried it. What do you like about it?
flukus 9y 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 9y ago
  But the solutions to adware crap are thankfully legal and trivial.
  - flukus 9y 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.
dessant 9y 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/issues/308 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...
- valenceelectron 9y 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.
diegoperini 9y ago
Can someone point to the pure, ad-free fork?
- dessant 9y ago
  https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus https://github.com/mehcode/atom-minimap-plus https://github.com/mehcode/atom-minimap-plus
  - diegoperini 9y ago
    Appreciated. :)
jondot 9y 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 9y ago
  freeware?
tradesmanhelix 9y 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 https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus.

70 points by fooey 9y 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 9y ago

Ads in a text editor? Wow.

ameesdotme 9y ago
https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear You can even monetize your terminal applications!
westmeal 9y ago
Now coming to an emacs near you!

Fej 9y ago

Sucks, since Kite looks pretty neat.

olodus 9y 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.

bobwaycott 9y ago
From what I read in the comments, they also did it to the python-autocomplete plugin.
skrowl 9y ago
Have you tried VS Code? It's pretty great with Python.
- bobwaycott 9y 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.
  - hgdsraj 9y ago
    PyCharm anyone? Superior to everything else.
    - bobwaycott 9y ago
      Oddly enough, 10 years of Python later, I’ve actually never tried it. What do you like about it?

flukus 9y 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 9y ago
But the solutions to adware crap are thankfully legal and trivial.
- flukus 9y 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.

dessant 9y 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/issues/308 https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-python/i...

valenceelectron 9y 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.

diegoperini 9y ago

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

dessant 9y ago
https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus https://github.com/mehcode/atom-minimap-plus https://github.com/mehcode/atom-minimap-plus
- diegoperini 9y ago
  Appreciated. :)

jondot 9y 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 9y ago
freeware?

tradesmanhelix 9y 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 https://atom.io/packages/minimap-plus.