Advertisement in the official FF 1.0 de-DE! Officially? Why?

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
Locked
utah
Posts: 20
Joined: September 20th, 2003, 1:50 pm
Location: Germany

Post by utah »

I think someone (MozEurope) committed a giant mistake here. And quite frankly, I think covering it up ("Would so. please close this thread!") is not the way to deal with it.

Entering the Mozilla Firefox site, I run into a quote saying:
“Beware of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” - USA Today

Well, in my understanding a software that delivers customer-related information to a company that pays for this information is - spyware. If the software's user is not informed about this, of course, which is definitely the case here.

Germany is a big market for computer software, esp. open source. FF got a great press coverage there lately, and now I'm on Google News checking for more good press on FF, and I see Heise.de telling the (German-speaking) world about spyware in FF-de.

This is bad, bad, bad. It's damaging the potential user's trust in FF, and it's damaging the trust of people that have already been using FF for a while and now wonder how much info they've already supplied to ebay or whoever.

How could MozEurope ever be so stupid?! They're really doing a great disservice to the entire project... at a time when negative press is least needed! Gosh...
_hb_
Posts: 28
Joined: November 15th, 2004, 9:13 am

what good could come out of it?

Post by _hb_ »

Kel-nage wrote:... I can't see what good would come out of people discussing the mistake (I'll keep on calling it that) of a translator. it will just become a massive hate thread. And as I've said, I'm sure they're going to fix it, so what good could come out of it?


You may see it as a "mistake". Others don't.

what good come out of it ?

To stop that fine work called "Firefox" going called "ADWARE", "SPYWARE" .. and so on ...
User avatar
guest123
Posts: 300
Joined: March 16th, 2004, 1:51 pm

Post by guest123 »

I don't know german, so couldn't read that german forum. Was just wondering whats the response of Mozilla foundation or more inportantly the Mozilla europe about the whole issue. In my opinion, Mozilla eupore should immediately correct it (which is obvious), admit that it made a blunder (not *mistake*) and apologise ASAP for it.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Dunderklumpen
Posts: 16224
Joined: March 9th, 2003, 8:12 am

Post by Dunderklumpen »

guest123 wrote:I don't know german, so couldn't read that german forum. Was just wondering whats the response of Mozilla foundation or more inportantly the Mozilla europe about the whole issue. In my opinion, Mozilla eupore should immediately correct it (which is obvious), admit that it made a blunder (not *mistake*) and apologise ASAP for it.


I agree, completely. We all make mistakes/blunders/errors. Admitt them, apologise - end of story.

And since this can crop up again - extensions can be a problem in the future - in the same way
- create a policy how to handle this type of matters. That is - a policy on how to handle extensions with ads/spyware.
User avatar
Kel-nage
Posts: 265
Joined: November 6th, 2004, 8:30 pm
Location: Norfolk, UK
Contact:

Post by Kel-nage »

utah wrote:I think someone (MozEurope) committed a giant mistake here. And quite frankly, I think covering it up ("Would so. please close this thread!") is not the way to deal with it.



This isn't covering it up. What it is doing is trying to keep to discussion to one thread so Mozilla Europe and the Foundation can see it.

Blunder, mistake, what's the difference? From what I can see, it was a (unauthorised) attempt by a translator to make some money for the Mozilla project. I am certain they will be fixing it. And I also hope they will apologise to the German FF community.

And seeing as this had no effect on the English translations, how will discussing it here help stop Mozilla from becoming Adware powered? As has been stated before, it's only affected the German translation.
User avatar
guest123
Posts: 300
Joined: March 16th, 2004, 1:51 pm

Post by guest123 »

Kel-nage wrote:From what I can see, it was a (unauthorised) attempt by a translator to make some money for the Mozilla project.


Was the money supposed to go to Mozilla project or to some individual, the translator? (some hidden arrangement, who knows if the translator owns that company through which the information was redirected).
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
User avatar
Kel-nage
Posts: 265
Joined: November 6th, 2004, 8:30 pm
Location: Norfolk, UK
Contact:

Post by Kel-nage »

I'm not really sure, my German is a bit lax at the moment. From what I've understood from the English translations is that the coder decided to change it so it went through a page that gave money to the foundation. I'm really not 100% sure about that though.
utah
Posts: 20
Joined: September 20th, 2003, 1:50 pm
Location: Germany

Post by utah »

Can't help it, looks like pay-per-click to me!

Fact is: FF-de searchplugin for ebay reroutes the search to an ebay affiliate (adfarm via webtip.ch) that counts how many searches are being done on ebay through FF.

MozEurope's Axel Hecht in this German discussion thread (http://firefox.stw.uni-duisburg.de/foru ... php?t=9677) admits he included this reroute in the FF-de ebay searchplugin. Yet he claims it's perfectly alright to do this. Btw, this action leave a tracking cookie on your computer (yuck!).

Quote from an official of this ebay affiliate in the same thread:
"Dieses Partnerprogramm soll nach einer Testphase dazu beitragen,
die finanzielle Unterstuetzung der Mozilla Foundation abzusichern."

Translated: "This partner programme should help finance Mozilla Foundation after a test phase."

In plain text: MozEurope is getting money for this or was planning to get money for this. And this is the point, IMHO. They're not getting donations from ebay because ebay thinks FF is such a great thing. It's all about profit.

@Dunderklumpen, Kel-nage: I perfectly agree, there should be an apology and this feature should be removed from the official DE-version asap. Before more damage's done (it's already in the media, so...!)
danny_w
Posts: 73
Joined: November 10th, 2004, 8:33 am

Post by danny_w »

Since Mozilla doesn't seem to verify the integrity of add-on extensions, this might could be understood if it came from an outside programmer. But are you saying that it was somebody in the Mozilla organization itself that did this? I might could forgive the former, but certainly not the latter.

I mentioned in another thread that I think it is in Mozilla's best interest to verify extensions before adding them to their websites, as this tends to imply that they are somehow "sanctioned" by Mozilla. But even that wouldn't have helped in this case.
Dunderklumpen
Posts: 16224
Joined: March 9th, 2003, 8:12 am

Post by Dunderklumpen »

If this was done by an affiliated site - even more use for a policy.
fnkmaster
Posts: 1122
Joined: November 21st, 2002, 1:18 pm

Post by fnkmaster »

Allow me to throw in my opinion too. Trying to squelch discussion of this on the English language FF forums just makes it look like the MozEurope people are trying to keep this quiet. It shouldn't be kept quiet. They need to instantly come out and say "Ooops, we made a mistake, the German FF translator/maintainer did something unauthorized and we've now chastized him and sorted it out" or "Oops, we just weren't thinking when we told him he could do this and on further consideration, we've realized what a terrible idea this was". Then we can put this behind us and avoid losing too much trust in the Mozilla Foundation.

Pretty much the ENTIRE value of the Mozilla organization is in the trust and goodwill it has with the community of users and developers who work with it every day. I see millions of dollars worth of volunteer labor going into supporting Firefox and helping make it better on these forums every day. Shake the foundation of people's trust in the Mozilla organization, and you could see that support fall away. Since none of us want that, we need to be reassured that the Mozilla team are and will remain the good guys. Obviously, I don't mean to overstate the importance of this one incident, which is relatively minor in itself, but trust is easily shattered with small lies and misrepresentations.
utah
Posts: 20
Joined: September 20th, 2003, 1:50 pm
Location: Germany

Post by utah »

Kel-nage wrote:This isn't covering it up. What it is doing is trying to keep to discussion to one thread so Mozilla Europe and the Foundation can see it.


Well, that's a point. But the statements from MozEurope officials in the German debate were really very much like "What's your problem, guys?!". And I think this touches a very important general problem: does Mozilla foundation accept commercial money for implementing features into an official build on request of companies ?

Kel-nage wrote:Blunder, mistake, what's the difference? From what I can see, it was a (unauthorised) attempt by a translator to make some money for the Mozilla project. I am certain they will be fixing it. And I also hope they will apologise to the German FF community.


As far as I understand it, it was done by someone from MozEurope, not the translator. That's why everybody (Germans that is!) is so upset. The foundation did it. It *was* authorised.

Kel-nage wrote:And seeing as this had no effect on the English translations, how will discussing it here help stop Mozilla from becoming Adware powered? As has been stated before, it's only affected the German translation.

My problem is the general question - ebay's money going to MozEurope for a reroute no user knew about.
utah
Posts: 20
Joined: September 20th, 2003, 1:50 pm
Location: Germany

Post by utah »

Axel Hecht, who implemented the reroute feature, is on Mozilla Europe's Board of Directos:
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/about/

The more I think about it the more angry I get..
garyniger
Posts: 65
Joined: October 7th, 2004, 10:05 am

Post by garyniger »

There's no question where the money will end - Netscape (or their Mozilla "Foundation" which pays their laid-off former employees).

They know that nobody will pay for their half-assed piece of shit and test new "streams of revenue" (in US-capitalistic terms).

Perhaps all that money spent for "independent press-coverage" (very independent, of course) was a bit too much for their "Foundation".

American companies never cease to disgust.
User avatar
guest123
Posts: 300
Joined: March 16th, 2004, 1:51 pm

Post by guest123 »

Pike2 wrote:Can someone please close this thread?

This issue is discussed in the german FF forums, and there is no reason to split it.

The german thread has attention by both Mozilla Europe and the Foundation, represented by me and Mitchell Baker. Which is up to now ignored by the poster.

Axel Hecht

Mozilla Europe


utah wrote:Axel Hecht, who implemented the reroute feature, is on Mozilla Europe's Board of Directos:
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/about/


So, it was Alex Hecht who was responsible for the whole episode. No wonder he tried to close this thread !!!
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Locked