to autodownload or not to autodownload

Hans de Goede j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl
Fri Feb 8 17:54:39 UTC 2008


Hi All,

Starting a new thread for the autodownload discussion which has forked of the 
google-earth thread.

First of all let say that I understand that autodownloader is a grey area, and 
as such I'm more then willing to discuss its use and maybe put down some 
guidelines for its use. For myself I've used as guideline sofar:
-autodownloader is only for content, and only for content for Free engines /
  applications.

I must say however although I understand the greyness and the worries about 
autodl, I must say I'm currently not much inclined to spend much time defending it.

Why? Because we also ship the blacker then black, actually automatically 
downloading closed source code, not content but code! codecbuddy. Not only does 
it automatically download some gratis closed source code, it even offers the 
user to buy closed source code, effectively free advertising for commercial 
closed source! I've kept quiet about this sofar, because I much rather spend 
time being productive then having discussions, but IMHO this is _not_ acceptable.

So my stance on autodownloader is simple, next to codecbuddy its brightly 
shining white, so white it almost hurts the eyes. So if we're going to discuss 
things like this, lets start with the largest offender and remove codecbuddy!

If, once codecbuddy has been removed, the conclusion of more discussion will 
end up that autodownloader is not acceptable too, then so be it. I will gladly 
sacrifice autodownloader if thats the price to pay to get codecbuddy (as is) 
removed.

I must say that any complaints about autodownloader before codecbuddy gets 
removed, to me, are nothing short of hypocritical, and therefor will not be 
taken very seriously by me.

Regards,

Hans




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