Hi guys, As many of you are aware, there's a lot of scumbags out there that take open source software like Mixxx and Audacity, rebrand it (sometimes), bundle adware with it (always), and make money off our work.
The GPL permits such lame behaviour, and in the past, we've asserted our trademark ownership in order to force some of these scumbags to stop using the Mixxx name anywhere on their site. Some of these guys go to great lengths to appear legitimate, such as having fancy certifications that say it's OK to steal your personal information and install loads of crap on your computer, as long as it's in the fine print. Additionally, there's a whole little economy that revolves around this stuff, which starts by sucking people in from Google Adwords, getting them to download and install Mixxx plus a bunch of toolbars and useless junk, and then the unscrupulous distributor gets paid per installation of crapware. Hey, it's a free market, and you could argue that they're filling some niche. I suspect that the vast majority of the people who install Mixxx from these guys know nothing about DJing, but that doesn't make it right. By bundling unrelated crapware with a product, you're adding ZERO value to it, and very much taking something away from the user experience during installation. The only value being produced is for the guys making the crapware - they're getting a cheap way to get their software on to loads of computers. (Back in the day, these things used to be like pyramid schemes - crapware installs more crapware... I don't know if that's still common, but I hear botnets are all the rage these days...) Anyways, it is indeed a free market, and some guys have been building a site called "Web of Trust", which seems like a useful tool for informing less aware users about what they're getting into when they visit one of these sites. With WOT, you can rank the trustworthiness of a site, and users who have WOT installed on their PCs get a big popup telling them when they visit one of these sketchy sites. I would encourage anyone who thinks vendors who like to fork Mixxx and bundle additional programs to please leave their feedback on the WOT page for each of these sites. You can install WOT via a Chrome extension (easiest way): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bhmmomiinigofkjcapegjjndpbikblnp And the official Web of Trust site is at: http://www.mywot.com Lastly, you might wonder if this is similar to what Google already has in-place, where they block malicious sites. The answer is no, Google tends to mostly block sites with browser exploits, and additionally, they're making a profit out of all of this too via Adwords, so they have a conflict of interest. Web of Trust seems to be genuinely neutral for now. Thanks, Albert -- Albert Santoni Developer, Mixxx http://www.mixxx.org http://www.oscillicious.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Get Mixxx, the #1 Free MP3 DJ Mixing software Today http://mixxx.org Mixxx-devel mailing list Mixxx-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mixxx-devel
