4 ms·

how the hell did the uBlock brand get sold do ABP anyways? (probably the wrong place to ask such things on HN)

by fock 8y ago

enriquto 8y ago
well they probably paid enough money to the people who sold it. If you were owner of that name, how much would you sell it for?
nes350 8y ago
This has been previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9718625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9718625
k__ 8y ago
It seems like uBlock was forked. The people who forked tried to make some money off the name by asking people for donations. They seemingly failed after the uBlock creator called them out and renamed his work to "uBlock Origin". So the people who forked sold what they got to ABP and called it a day.
gorhill 8y ago
I wrote my own thoughts on this on Reddit recently[1], excerpt: > BetaFish Inc, owner of AdBlock, paid to acquire control of the GitHub repository and control of the ublock.org site last year. The apparent goal was to keep the deception ongoing, and further increase it, as clearly the site is trying to game search engines so to rank ublock.org high in results. They also registered the trademark "uBlock" in Germany, and have been pulling code from "uBlock Origin" repo. > Nothing that they are doing is user friendly, it's to deceive people who are looking to install "uBlock Origin" into installing "uBlock" instead. * * * [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/b8vr9j/got_fooled_into_installing_ublockorg_chrome/ek0yaao/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/b8vr9j/got_fo...
- wnevets 8y ago
  >paid to acquire control of the GitHub repository Paid who?
  - ihuman 8y ago
    I think Chris Aljoudi > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin > Through April and May 2015, the uBlock project was forked by Chris Aljoudi, while uBlock Origin reflected the continuing effort by the original developer Raymond Hill. Since April 2015, uBlock Origin has been completely unrelated to the web site ublock.org. > Shortly after the project division [between uBlock and uBlock Origin], Chris Aljoudi created ublock.org to host uBlock, promote the extension and request donations... In July 2018, uBlock was acquired by AdBlock.
    - fireattack 8y ago
      The wording on Wikipedia doesn't seem to match what actually happened. IIRC, Raymond Hill, the original author of uBlock and current maintainer of uBlock Origin, voluntarily gave the control of uBlock project to Chris Aljoudi because he was tired of dealing with all the bug reports/issues (and Aljoudi offered to take it over, I think). But due to various reasons, shortly (very shortly, maybe even no gap in between) after, he self-forked uBlock [1] to make uBlock Origin and started to work on it again. So technically uBlock Origin is the fork, and more importantly, Chris Aljoudi didn't really "fork uBlock", he inherited the main repo. Note: I'm by no means to defend Aljoudi's practice on uBlock and I'm pretty sure Hill regretted his decision of handing it over. But let's avoid historical revisionism. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150427225211/https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150427225211/https://github.co... (See the "forked from chrisaljoudi/uBlock" text and readme.MD below) --- Edit: [2] Hill's own words about this matter on Apr 11, 2015: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-91871802 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-918...
      - AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
        Please correct me if I am mistaken, but wasn't https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock where the original uBlock was hosted at? Gorhill might had declared Raymond to be the "owner" of uBlock but to me it is not clear that uBlock Origin is a fork by any means.
- clairity 8y ago
  thank you for ublock (origin). i was almost fooled into installing the wrong extension when the ublock fork happened. it's shameful that someone would try to take advantage of your hard work like that.
- lima 8y ago
  Did you give away your (implicit) trademark rights to Chris? Simply giving ownership to a GitHub repo might not be a license.
- phonypc 8y ago
  Well this is embarrassing... just double checked what I have installed after reading this, thinking I surely had uBlock Origin. Nope. Fixed now. Thanks for your work.

how the hell did the uBlock brand get sold do ABP anyways? (probably the wrong place to ask such things on HN)

by fock 8y ago

how the hell did the uBlock brand get sold do ABP anyways? (probably the wrong place to ask such things on HN)

well they probably paid enough money to the people who sold it. If you were owner of that name, how much would you sell it for?

nes350 8y ago

This has been previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9718625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9718625

k__ 8y ago

It seems like uBlock was forked. The people who forked tried to make some money off the name by asking people for donations. They seemingly failed after the uBlock creator called them out and renamed his work to "uBlock Origin". So the people who forked sold what they got to ABP and called it a day.

gorhill 8y ago

I wrote my own thoughts on this on Reddit recently[1], excerpt: > BetaFish Inc, owner of AdBlock, paid to acquire control of the GitHub repository and control of the ublock.org site last year. The apparent goal was to keep the deception ongoing, and further increase it, as clearly the site is trying to game search engines so to rank ublock.org high in results. They also registered the trademark "uBlock" in Germany, and have been pulling code from "uBlock Origin" repo. > Nothing that they are doing is user friendly, it's to deceive people who are looking to install "uBlock Origin" into installing "uBlock" instead. * * * [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/b8vr9j/got_fooled_into_installing_ublockorg_chrome/ek0yaao/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/b8vr9j/got_fo...

wnevets 8y ago
>paid to acquire control of the GitHub repository Paid who?
- ihuman 8y ago
  I think Chris Aljoudi > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin > Through April and May 2015, the uBlock project was forked by Chris Aljoudi, while uBlock Origin reflected the continuing effort by the original developer Raymond Hill. Since April 2015, uBlock Origin has been completely unrelated to the web site ublock.org. > Shortly after the project division [between uBlock and uBlock Origin], Chris Aljoudi created ublock.org to host uBlock, promote the extension and request donations... In July 2018, uBlock was acquired by AdBlock.
  - fireattack 8y ago
    The wording on Wikipedia doesn't seem to match what actually happened. IIRC, Raymond Hill, the original author of uBlock and current maintainer of uBlock Origin, voluntarily gave the control of uBlock project to Chris Aljoudi because he was tired of dealing with all the bug reports/issues (and Aljoudi offered to take it over, I think). But due to various reasons, shortly (very shortly, maybe even no gap in between) after, he self-forked uBlock [1] to make uBlock Origin and started to work on it again. So technically uBlock Origin is the fork, and more importantly, Chris Aljoudi didn't really "fork uBlock", he inherited the main repo. Note: I'm by no means to defend Aljoudi's practice on uBlock and I'm pretty sure Hill regretted his decision of handing it over. But let's avoid historical revisionism. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150427225211/https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150427225211/https://github.co... (See the "forked from chrisaljoudi/uBlock" text and readme.MD below) --- Edit: [2] Hill's own words about this matter on Apr 11, 2015: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-91871802 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-918...
    - AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
      Please correct me if I am mistaken, but wasn't https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock where the original uBlock was hosted at? Gorhill might had declared Raymond to be the "owner" of uBlock but to me it is not clear that uBlock Origin is a fork by any means.
clairity 8y ago
thank you for ublock (origin). i was almost fooled into installing the wrong extension when the ublock fork happened. it's shameful that someone would try to take advantage of your hard work like that.
lima 8y ago
Did you give away your (implicit) trademark rights to Chris? Simply giving ownership to a GitHub repo might not be a license.
phonypc 8y ago
Well this is embarrassing... just double checked what I have installed after reading this, thinking I surely had uBlock Origin. Nope. Fixed now. Thanks for your work.