it was my first post on the subject, so no narrowing on my part.
i agree that finding a truly ethical company is as difficult as finding a truly ethical politician. i also believe purity tests are problematic; we all have our ups and downs, and our own different ways of viewing the world: don’t throw the baby out with the bath water as it were.
the way i personally differentiate is that - when i have a choice between similar products - i choose as best i can based on stated and actual behavior.
a ceo choosing to support prop 8 makes me sit up and take notice. there are many ways a ceo could mitigate, or explain this choice. so far as ive heard, this person hasnt distanced themselves from that stance. given the option therefore, i personally would choose to look elsewhere for a browser.
Well, in your first post, you mentioned “unethical” companies.
In your second post, you meant it clear that “unethical” only applied to LGBT issues in this context, which you did not actually say in your first post.
Just to be clear.
For myself, when I judge whether a company is unethical or not, I don’t narrow it to LGBT issues only and ignore other problems with the company’s ethics. Hence my comment that if you were concerned about ethics, you wouldn’t be buying software or hardware from Microsoft, Apple, Google, or many others.
It makes me take notice too. That still has nothing to do with the actual browser though. It has to do with the CEO. We’re discussing software here, really. The CEO is a side note, at best, unless you think he’s writing the software and incorporating an anti-LGBT bias into its code.
Because if the CEO of a company takes a position you think is unethical, the entire company and any products it produces are therefore unethical as well?
Virtualize that shit. Virtualbox or VMware. You could have your own little linux distro with a separate Firefox or whatever running in as a guest in windows in under 2 hours. And most of that is just the install time.
Virtualizing a second windows on a machine already running windows will give you crap results. But virtualizing something actually efficient, for instance DamnSmallLinux or PuppyLinux on a windows machine isn’t so bad.
Agreed. Also you should audit every single character and line of code. Have fun doing that with one of the big, constantly changing libraries!
From my perspective, it boils down to sharpening my own axe or leaving it rusting in the shed and assuming that outsiders I don’t know are better at my job than I am.
By writing my own code, I don’t make my sites invulnerable to attack - instead I minimze the chances that I’ll be part of a mass break of tens of thousands of sites.
I think if you are skilled enough to know your own limitations (for example, I don’t write encryption code, but I’m confident of my ability to write process controllers for a plutonium breeder reactor) you will know when you should and shouldn’t use a library. But in general, complexity is the enemy of reliabilty and security, and using large libraries multiplies complexity.
I do think it’s worth mentioning so people can make up their own mind whether or not to give him their money or use his product. Some people may not care, but someone might not want to give money or time to someone who actively attempted to work against gay marriage in California. I don’t think that’s beyond the pale.
From the user perspective; I’m utterly baffled as to why anyone would even touch this concept(why would I do business with the guy busily pasting his own ads into newspapers when there are multiple people willing to snip the ads out of newspapers and provide me with the improved result?); but so long as everything is done on the client end; I’m not sure what leg the publishers can stand on.
If this ‘Brave’ outfit were (like some of the sleazier ISPs) producing the unauthorized derivative work themselves, by grabbing the target page, munging it, then delivering it to the user; then I really, really would not want to be in their legal position.
However, since they are simply providing a browser that does some slightly atypical things in the process of rendering a page; the most aggressive possible stance you could take is that the end user is producing an unauthorized derivative work(though the idea that all user agents are legally obligated to render precisely as the owner of the page being rendered demands would be unbelievably far-reaching and destructive); ‘Brave’ isn’t ever touching the copyrighted material, or ‘redistributing’ anything.
Yes, in effect the original ads get stripped and Brave’s get inserted; but the situation isn’t ‘somebody taking, modifying, and redistributing newpapers’, it is ‘somebody selling eyeglasses that alter your view of a newspaper as you read it’. Redistribution of unauthorized derivative works would be an obvious way for the company to step right into a world of hurt; so they haven’t touched that.
it honestly seems like you confused me and another poster. at any rate, i will agree that in this context people were talking about lgbt issues because that’s something notable about the person to whom we are referring.
of course. and that’s great.
i think this is incorrect. it is impossible to divorce politics from other endeavors in life. the only time it seems people can is when it doesn’t affect them personally.
i don’t mean to trigger but this is where the concept of privilege comes from. if an issue doesn’t affect a person, then they have the privilege to ignore it. for everyone else, the choice is not so simple.
fwiw. other people have been discussing the pure software side of things. i’m reading with interest, but don’t have much to contribute on that front.
that’s a straw-man. i simply don’t want to give him money.
I did. My apologies for that. Late night, lack of attention or something. That’s on me.
Well, I could think he’s a horrible person for his viewpoints and political contributions but he’s still one guy in a company of people. I’m much more interested in whether his company can make their ad model work or not as I work on browsers for a living and I see this as an issue of some importance. (That isn’t implying that LGBT rights is not very important but him being a dick about it is known and he’s been personally ostracized for it and even lost a job in the company he co-founded over it.)
As to affecting me personally, well, my mother is queer, as is my daughter so…
But whether you use Brave or not is not really an LGBT issue unless you think that any use of a product when a senior member of a company (including the CEO) is a homophobe is supporting homophobia, etc. I’m not saying that people don’t have a right to that viewpoint either but I’m not sure it isn’t short-sighted given how many silently horrible views many in the tech industry has. The difference here is that his views have been revealed.
Well, I think it is an interesting question about where the line is. I’m perfectly fine with people not giving him money (if you care for my opinion on this) though. I’m not running Brave either but that’s mostly because I think it is dumb and I run the code I work on.
Oh, that’s about 10% of my work life many weeks of the year on the browser.
I keep telling that to people who say things like “I don’t like how browser X has changed in the last two years so I run the version from three years ago!” facepalm
The reason to do this (which I agree seems dumb to me) is to find a middle ground between “block all ads and screw the publishers of content” and “Accept all ads so publishers get paid but then put up with all the crap and malware that may come with them.” They’re trying to find a way for people to get paid and to deal with some of the problems with the ad ecosystem. I agree with that as a decent possible intent but I’m really doubting this execution will work.
The reason/audience for the browser, I think, is the group of people who don’t mind being advertised to all the time but don’t want the security risks of unsavory ads.
Really weird, niche market, but I guess some people are willing to give up some peace and quiet to feel like they’re supporting a content creator. Personally, I can’t concentrate on any text with ten bright, sometimes flashing boxes surrounding it, with a floating autoplaying video following me around the page.
Well, I also don’t believe currency should exist and that all released content, art, and culture should be freely accessible, so that probably informs my opinion as well.
I would rather have UI gripes than an unsecured browser. On the whole I can say that once I grok what is going on with the changes probably 99% of the time I just go okay and retrain my muscle memory or whatever. Then there are abominations like the windows 8 start menu.
