On Wednesday 2013-12-04 15:32 +0800, Li Gong wrote: > Indeed we discovered the "joker" msg in the same way, and have > removed that part with an update. Joking aside, there are many > complicated sides to this situation, some of which you may or may > not be familiar with. In recent months, there are many severe > cases of traffic hijacking in China, prompted in part by various > promotional programs run by some large companies (whose names I > shall not name here right now). For example, a media player, once > installed, will change installed browser behavior so that all > browser traffic for some type get credited to the media company, > which will then obtain money from the beneficiary of that type of > traffic. There are many such cases, especially this year. We are > caught between some big land grab/battle among major internet > companies in China, coupled with everything-goes techniques. If we > do nothing and just stand there, we will be reduced out of any > significance or influence.
How does our significance or influence depend on acting in this way? Is it because of revenue that Mozilla China earns through Firefox being credited as the source of traffic to sites? Or other reasons? > Having said that, our BD team, in counter-attack or maybe better > described as self-defense, did go overly aggressive in this > particular case. Once we are aware of the situation, it has been > immediately corrected. The teams and actual members involved are > definitely learning lessons from this episode. We continue to > watch closely over such sensitive areas and hopefully we won't > make the same mistake again. My understanding of what I've read in this thread is that Mozilla China distributed builds had code that rewrote user-added bookmarks to redirect them through another site, and thus somehow gain revenue from the referral. So, based on that understanding, which might be wrong: Self-defense seems like ensuring that the traffic that we direct is properly accounted for. (Defending others -- that is, ensuring that other bookmarks or links don't get incorrectly reattributed -- also seems like a reasonable move.) But changing a bookmark that a user has made seems to go beyond self-defense. But based on the reactions of others, it seems like I'm not the only person having trouble understanding what happened here. I think it would help other parts of the Mozilla community to better understand the situation in China that you're describing, and what we're doing there. For example: what mechanisms are being used for the "crediting" of traffic, and what mechanisms are being used to "hijack" that crediting or hijack traffic in other ways? -David -- š¯„˛ L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/ š¯„‚ š¯„¢ Mozilla https://www.mozilla.org/ š¯„‚ Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)
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