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We, the open source community, need to respond to this pollution firmly and decisively. Apart from removing the sneaky code put in for these types of purpose, w

We, the open source community, need to respond to this pollution firmly and decisively. Apart from removing the sneaky code put in for these types of purpose, we may need to consider adjusting the licensing to forbid such doing ... the entire open source world need to unite against this ... it is threatening the future of open source.

TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
Is Facebook part of the "open source community?" I would expect that most people here would say yes, for reasons I will assume are obvious to most readers here. Yet they've built, arguably, the world's second largest (non-governmental) data mining operation on the back of open source software, designed for nothing more than slurping up user data to sell to advertisers. How is that fundamentally any different than what's described here? Because the product is "more" useful to end users? Because it's true nature is "more" visible? It's a difference in degree, not kind. If you hate what's been done here, by extension, you should hate the business model of Facebook and Twitter, et. al. (I do, and I refuse to participate.) There seems to be a bit of hypocrisy having this sort of outrage on this particular site.
- danso 9y ago
  Does React or any of Facebook's OSS libraries have pop-up/modal ads for joining Facebook? Do they contain analytics code?
  - TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
    So that's the difference, here, that exculpates Facebook? That they don't put their analytics code in PHP or React? Granted, Facebook doesn't put analytics code in those products, but almost every web programmer in the world happily embeds Facebook's JS blob/web bug in almost every single site on the planet to track every single click, by Facebook users or not, which can be tied back to at least a shadow profile in the mothership. That's cool? If so: Got it. I can see the distinction you're making, but, IMO, it's splitting hairs. Either tracking users activity, by the simple act of their use of your product, is morally acceptable, or it's not. To me, this seems like this exact same thing. As Scott McNealy said, "You have no privacy. Get over it." I wish that wasn't true, but it would seem that the every government and company is hell bent on making it so.
    - nevir 9y ago
      Don't forget that there are actual people that come up with, and write the code for projects like React. They're often solving problems that affect large numbers of developers (initially, inside their company). And, because of the scale of a company like Facebook, they can afford to work full time on these projects. They then open source them because there's no strategic value to keeping them private, and significant upside to building a community around them (and not undermining that). I'd argue that some of the best open source projects come from large companies - due to the sheer number of developer hours they can throw at them. Small dev shops can't afford it, there are very few OSS foundations, and there just aren't that many people (relatively) that can devote enough time on the side to compete.
      - danso 9y ago
        FWIW, Facebook's head of open source, James Pearce, had an excellent interview with Changelog about FB's motivations and challenges for maintaining open source projects: https://changelog.com/podcast/211 https://changelog.com/podcast/211 According to Pearce, the amount of resources to manage open-source is non-trivial. For now, there's a decision process before deciding whether a project should go open source because of the maintenance cost and because they don't want dead projects under their banner (e.g. codebases that don't get used by the non-FB open-source community). One interesting point Pearce brought up was that React takes community contributions, but FB's policy is to have a single version of React, i.e. the React that's released to the public is exactly what runs on FB production, which requires a certain level of logistics. The main benefit of OS, besides the free labor from the open source community, is public adoption of the software, which gives FB some kind of leverage in the software world. But it also means that job candidates can come in already experienced in React etc.
    - danso 9y ago
      Is it splitting hairs to point out that many developers use React who also don't "happily embeds Facebook JS blob/web bug" in their pages? That's the whole point under discussion here, that the spirit and body of open source is that software can be transparently built and maintained for the greater good, and that Kite's quiet, self-serving changes seem to violate what most people consider standard conduct. How far do you want to take the sins-of-the-creator argument? Does everyone who writes or executes JS become an abettor to Brenden Eich's beliefs on same-sex marriage? How many Internet users are linked to U.S. war actions given DARPA's large role in creating the Internet? An argument about whether Facebook and Google are evil is out of scope for this thread, but pretty much argued daily in various other daily threads. I think it's possible for people to like corporations and open source, yet find it disturbing when corporations violate community standards of open source.
ystad 9y ago
I agree totally, the license should prevent companies or individuals to add promotional content band code

TheRealDunkirk 9y ago

Is Facebook part of the "open source community?" I would expect that most people here would say yes, for reasons I will assume are obvious to most readers here. Yet they've built, arguably, the world's second largest (non-governmental) data mining operation on the back of open source software, designed for nothing more than slurping up user data to sell to advertisers. How is that fundamentally any different than what's described here? Because the product is "more" useful to end users? Because it's true nature is "more" visible? It's a difference in degree, not kind. If you hate what's been done here, by extension, you should hate the business model of Facebook and Twitter, et. al. (I do, and I refuse to participate.) There seems to be a bit of hypocrisy having this sort of outrage on this particular site.

danso 9y ago
Does React or any of Facebook's OSS libraries have pop-up/modal ads for joining Facebook? Do they contain analytics code?
- TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
  So that's the difference, here, that exculpates Facebook? That they don't put their analytics code in PHP or React? Granted, Facebook doesn't put analytics code in those products, but almost every web programmer in the world happily embeds Facebook's JS blob/web bug in almost every single site on the planet to track every single click, by Facebook users or not, which can be tied back to at least a shadow profile in the mothership. That's cool? If so: Got it. I can see the distinction you're making, but, IMO, it's splitting hairs. Either tracking users activity, by the simple act of their use of your product, is morally acceptable, or it's not. To me, this seems like this exact same thing. As Scott McNealy said, "You have no privacy. Get over it." I wish that wasn't true, but it would seem that the every government and company is hell bent on making it so.
  - nevir 9y ago
    Don't forget that there are actual people that come up with, and write the code for projects like React. They're often solving problems that affect large numbers of developers (initially, inside their company). And, because of the scale of a company like Facebook, they can afford to work full time on these projects. They then open source them because there's no strategic value to keeping them private, and significant upside to building a community around them (and not undermining that). I'd argue that some of the best open source projects come from large companies - due to the sheer number of developer hours they can throw at them. Small dev shops can't afford it, there are very few OSS foundations, and there just aren't that many people (relatively) that can devote enough time on the side to compete.
    - danso 9y ago
      FWIW, Facebook's head of open source, James Pearce, had an excellent interview with Changelog about FB's motivations and challenges for maintaining open source projects: https://changelog.com/podcast/211 https://changelog.com/podcast/211 According to Pearce, the amount of resources to manage open-source is non-trivial. For now, there's a decision process before deciding whether a project should go open source because of the maintenance cost and because they don't want dead projects under their banner (e.g. codebases that don't get used by the non-FB open-source community). One interesting point Pearce brought up was that React takes community contributions, but FB's policy is to have a single version of React, i.e. the React that's released to the public is exactly what runs on FB production, which requires a certain level of logistics. The main benefit of OS, besides the free labor from the open source community, is public adoption of the software, which gives FB some kind of leverage in the software world. But it also means that job candidates can come in already experienced in React etc.
  - danso 9y ago
    Is it splitting hairs to point out that many developers use React who also don't "happily embeds Facebook JS blob/web bug" in their pages? That's the whole point under discussion here, that the spirit and body of open source is that software can be transparently built and maintained for the greater good, and that Kite's quiet, self-serving changes seem to violate what most people consider standard conduct. How far do you want to take the sins-of-the-creator argument? Does everyone who writes or executes JS become an abettor to Brenden Eich's beliefs on same-sex marriage? How many Internet users are linked to U.S. war actions given DARPA's large role in creating the Internet? An argument about whether Facebook and Google are evil is out of scope for this thread, but pretty much argued daily in various other daily threads. I think it's possible for people to like corporations and open source, yet find it disturbing when corporations violate community standards of open source.

ystad 9y ago

I agree totally, the license should prevent companies or individuals to add promotional content band code