First off, we're willing to help you remove Growl. We need you to calm down though. Growl isn't some spyware app or anything else. It's a really benign application which isn't harming your system. If you are capable, you can even look at our code.
To respond to your point, the only thing we can do is yell at them. There are multiple applications which install Growl without telling the end user, and we only discover it after that application ships. What we know about each application: Adobe CS5 Suite - Adobe ships and installs Growl with their CS5 suite. We found out about this *2 weeks* after they shipped it, because of someone who wrote an angry news article about it. We were able to use a contact we had made through a different department to get in touch with the manager of the group responsible. Once he realized what was happening, he set things up to get this action changed. However, for large software packages that isn't instantaneous. Dropbox - We learned about Growl being installed by end users coming to yell at us, being even meaner/ruder than your initial email. Threatening to sue us, threatening to come take my house. Someone even threatened to come kill me. I've since purchased firearms, and know how to use them. We've yelled at Dropbox for well over a year. They just recently figured out why we were yelling at them. They are going to address this in the next version of their product. Hopefully that gets rid of the majority of user complaints about this. Zumo - Zumo has multiple applications that did this, assumedly they shared the same code base in some way. I think as soon as they were told this is the wrong way to do things, that they addressed it. That's all we know about. We don't have the funds, the means, or the want to go sue these people. If we start suing developers, the ones who do the proper thing with regards to Growl would likely fear us in the back of their minds. This is not a good idea. I also do not want to spend any more time than is necessary on it, and a legal battle seems longer than necessary. When Growl was initially created, we decided on the bsd license. Essentially it allows developers to do what they want with Growl, so long as they credit us. This may seem awful to you, but for six years it has worked fine. Developers did not need to fear repurcussions of a different license like the GPL. It allowed us to easily convey licensing (3 clauses, that's it). It protected us in certain ways. Essentially we put out Growl, and told some developers about it. Some worked with us, and implemented Growl support. This was really benign. If Growl was there, it notified via Growl. If Growl was not there, it did not. That's it. We are working on ways to suggest to people on our website not to do this, and we're working on ways to alleviate the problem after the fact (like in the scenario you are in), but that's all we can really do as we see it. We don't care about the amount of users using Growl, we find Growl useful and like working on it. If we had 5 users, instead of 5 million happy users, we'd still be working on it. Also, to be clear, we do not pay anyone to ship Growl. Nobody pays us to ship Growl. These companies simply decided one day to just ship Growl without telling users. It's wrong these companies did this. It's wrong that people yell at us, threaten us. It's also wrong that this was even a problem in the first place. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about booking a flight to go yell at these people in person, but that wouldn't do any good. We're obviously reasonable people, who are willing to help you out. This is the best thing we can do right now, getting things squared away for you. Let us help you, drop the attitude, and let's figure out what's installing Growl for you. I hope this explains our position to you. Chris On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 10:24 AM, knapp <[email protected]> wrote: > > That is your answer, really? I need to complain to someone else? > I don't even know what software program installed this awful program > on my system. I don't even use dropbox. > This is Growl software and it just keeps coming back, I uninstall it, > and it comes back. I am truly sick of being asked to upgrade Growl. > > There is something you can do about it, don't let companies install > your software on a computer without the user's knowledge. > > > > On Jan 21, 8:13 am, Peter Hosey <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Jan 21, 2011, at 08:09:44, knapp wrote: >> >> > I am really, truly, SOOO sick of Growl being on my system. I didn't >> > download it, … >> >> Some other program installed Growl, then. >> >> > And yes, I have been to the Growl site, and yes, I have tried it's >> > instructions to get rid of it, and it still keeps coming back. >> >> Make sure you turn off the preference in Dropbox's Preferences, or update to >> Dropbox 1.0 or later. Older versions of Dropbox reinstalled Growl after you >> uninstalled it. >> >> Growl does not install itself, nor does it reinstall itself. >> >> You need to complain to the company whose software installed/reinstalls >> Growl. There is nothing we on the Growl team can do about it. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Growl Discuss" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Growl Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss?hl=en.
