TACO Extension for Firefox Forked After Proprietary Update

rtfa-troll writes "Beef Taco is a Firefox extension that allows a mass opt-out from tracking and targeted advertising by many ad networks. The Register reports that the original system, TACO, has become proprietary, and has added new 'features' best described as bloatware. I guess this should serve as a warning for users to always prefer software under a copyleft license where possible. If Google had chosen a license with better protection, such as the GPL, when it released its own opt-out tool, this problem would have been much less likely. This also shows why forks are so important when software development begins to get messy."

This is good news

[gooman]

Just last week I got a notice to "upgrade" TACO to 3.0 and foolishly did so. A tiny little 8KB add-on became a 3MB disaster. Now it has new features which clash with other add ons or were redundant for me. Music streaming was broken for some sites and best of all, the old version, while available (and compatible), will no longer install on Firefox 3.6.

After uninstalling it, I downloaded the source for 2.0 and was planning attempt a fix, but now I don't have to. Obviously someone else was just as irritated, to that individual I say, "Thank you."

They are 'anonymising' the data then selling it

[Sonny_Jimbod]

This way, they can sell the data on and still stick to their 'privacy policy': "Our Abine browser add-on uses hashes of unique identifiers that are not tied to you or your IP address, to help you track versions and updates for the add-on, and a different set of randomly generated identifiers to validate service requests such as creating or updating disposable email addresses. If you chose to provide more data in order to take advantage of additional services, such as webmail, add-on identifiers are never used in a way that ties it to your name or personal information to the best of our ability." Also, Eric Jung is on their 'Advisory board': http://abine.com/team.php [abine.com] If you don't know who he is, he is a board member of Mozilla Add-Ons governing board. This 'update' has made a mockery of the update mechanism in Firefox and severely undermines it in my view. Here's a link to the support board over at Abine, where I have been voicing my disapproval and I recommend you do the same: https://www.getabine.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7&start=10#p37 [getabine.com]

Re:They are 'anonymising' the data then selling it

[Sonny_Jimbod]

It gets worse, check this page out: http://forums.passwordmaker.org/index.php/topic,1654.0.html [passwordmaker.org] Surely it's a massive conflict of interest for Eric Jung to be a board member of the Mozilla Add-ons governing board and to be actively working on an Add-on, especially one like this?

Re:GPL better exactly how?

[erroneus]

I'll field this answer. There is more to it than what a commercial/proprietary interest will not be able to "take" from the community. There is also the moral, ethical and even emotional/spiritual aspects of F/OSS that need to be guarded. I don't use "spiritual" in the religious or supernatural sense either. I mean the "spirit of" meaning sense of the expression. When some people are working to build something and then some jackass comes along and uses it to make his fortune, it really takes the community spirit out of a project. It is rather like "RebelEFI" versus EmpireEFI. EmpireEFI is a nice project. RebelEFI has tainted it with their motives and their generally deceptive and selfish nature.

So while it is true that the community still has the untainted version(s) available to them, there is still some ugliness that really tends to sap the positive energy out of a project when commercial proprietary for-profit people come along to do selfish things with it. And I don't expect you or anyone else to fully understand it. If you do understand what I am saying, then you probably already agree with me -- so I'm not changing anyone's mind or giving anyone something new to think about by stating any of this. But by seeing and acknowledging this view point and rejecting it for whatever reason, you have to be honest with yourself about who you are inside and what drives and instincts you more closely identify with. If you disagree with the perspective I have expressed, then you are quite likely from the other camp who essentially believes it is okay to use the work of others for your personal gain.

So in short, part of the benefit of the GPL to to preserve the spirit of open source as well as the software itself.

Mozilla should pull them

[mrmeval]

And perpetually ban that developer/team/company from every having access again.

Re:They are 'anonymising' the data then selling it

[jorgevillalobos]

We have an unexpected features policy, also called No Surprises [mozilla.org]. We wouldn't have allowed the update if it enabled unexpected features for users, or if it had really changed its core functionality. But it didn't. It added several features, but they are also privacy and security tools, and they're turned off by default.

I don't agree that we should warn about codebase changes, since that's the developer's prerogative, but I do agree that we should communicate privacy policy or EULA changes. That's something that we can't do through Firefox at the moment, but we definitely want to include in the future.

Re:They are 'anonymising' the data then selling it

[Anonymous Coward]

You are beginning to sound like an Astroturfer, tbh. Is there any chance someone other than yourself could carry out a code review?

Re:GPL better exactly how?

[dfghjk]

The GPL community not only wants their community to grow but it wants others to shrink. Otherwise, this wouldn't be an issue at all. What difference does it make to GPL advocates what happens to non-GPL projects? The answer is simple and revealing.