
Minimap plugin for Atom implements ads, refuses to revert, resulting in a fork - fooey
https://github.com/atom-minimap/minimap/issues/588
======
bobwaycott
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.

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olodus
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.

~~~
skrowl
Have you tried VS Code? It's pretty great with Python.

~~~
bobwaycott
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
PyCharm anyone? Superior to everything else.

~~~
bobwaycott
Oddly enough, 10 years of Python later, I’ve actually never tried it. What do
you like about it?

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flukus
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
But the solutions to adware crap are thankfully legal and trivial.

~~~
flukus
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.

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jondot
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
freeware?

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dessant
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/i...](https://github.com/autocomplete-python/autocomplete-
python/issues/308)

~~~
valenceelectron
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.

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tradesmanhelix
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).

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aorth
Ads in a text editor? Wow.

~~~
ameesdotme
[https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear](https://github.com/Uberi/Adwear)

You can even monetize your terminal applications!

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

~~~
dessant
[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
Appreciated. :)

------
Fej
Sucks, since Kite looks pretty neat.

