Re:NPM Bans Terminal Ads
by mindslight on Friday August 30, 2019 @01:14PM
(#20840499)
Everyone agrees that Free and Open software needs better funding models. If it could somehow manage to obtain one hundredth the revenue stream of Surveillance Valley, projects could pay full time employees to polish up UX and compete for popular mindshare.
The problem here is the showing an ad is working directly against the user, and working directly against the user violates a core expectation of open software. A thing cannot be supported by destroying the thing itself.
It would also be unacceptable to backhaul system information for "market research", run a Bitcoin miner, add entries to authorized_keys, flash epileptic trigger patterns, etc. We would rightly call such additions security incidents, as is this attempt at psychologically manipulating users.
The problem here is the showing an ad is working directly against the user, and working directly against the user violates a core expectation of open software. A thing cannot be supported by destroying the thing itself.
It would also be unacceptable to backhaul system information for "market research", run a Bitcoin miner, add entries to authorized_keys, flash epileptic trigger patterns, etc. We would rightly call such additions security incidents, as is this attempt at psychologically manipulating users.