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What the hell is OpenCandy?

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40hz:
Just out of curiosity: are you going to state right up front on your download and product info pages that it contains OpenCandy, identify it as an adware application, and say that if you don't want to install it you'll need to explicitly tell it not to? and that tracking software may remain on their machine even if they later "uninstall" it.

Or are you going to let them find out about it after they download and start installing like it seems everybody who is including it does?-40hz (March 08, 2011, 08:11 AM)
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Well 40hz, I didn't see you warn me (us?) that the article you linked to was on a page
a) full of ads
b) which used at least 1 type of tracking mechanism
c) left behind files on my PC (numerous cookies, at least two of which were for tracking my browsing habits) even after I browsed away from the page.

That article, was every bit as evil as people seem to claim OC is.
-Eóin (March 09, 2011, 03:44 PM)
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Funny. That didn't happen to me. I have a cookie and ad blocker installed on my machine.

But apparently this discussion is getting you upset. So tell you what. Let's just forget it. Ok? :)

-----

P.S. Perhaps I didn't warn you because I didn't know? It isn't my webpage. Which is a bit different than somebody who signs on with OC and does know what it does. Or at least I assume they would before they started deploying it.

Eóin:
40hz, no I'm not upset, I just never understood why people seem so angry at OpenCandy and yet turn a blind eye to, or at least don't seem to care that much about, others which do the same, and often worse.

I'm not saying I think what OC does is fine and dandy, I'm asking why are people singling it out?

And again, I'm really not upset, not in the slightest. Also I know you didn't write the article, nor is it your site. But I just couldn't let slide the irony of an article complaining about OC while at the same time carrying out all the same evils, discovering that bit of hypocrisy pretty much made my day :)

f0dder:
The paranoia which surround OpenCandy astonishes me. I find the DLL related freak-outs particularly funny, seems as if people think a DLL sitting on your harddrive is more dangerous than a txt file? Which by the way, in terms of security/vulnerability issues, it's not!-Eóin (March 09, 2011, 03:37 PM)
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I've yet to hear of a text-file exploit, but it's not outside the realm of possibilities that an exploit could be found in the Portable Executable parser somewhere, that could trigger during explorer icon-extraction, an anti-malware program scanning the file, etc :)

Eóin:
True, true. Maybe I should have compared the DLL to an image or document file, PDF exploits anyone 8)

wraith808:
It seems like a lot of FUD, because there's a resistance to anyone monetizing software through ads.  A bad state of things, as I think there's a right way, and a wrong way, and it should be a legitimate way to monetize software development.
-wraith808 (March 09, 2011, 02:48 PM)
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Might want to read the article I linked to before you assume it's FUD. OC does not do things the way most "monetizing" add-in software does. And the guys operating the freeware review site I mentioned aren't Nervous-Nellie sensationalist type bloggers either.

There's a legitimate concern surrounding OC in particular - which has nothing to do with software authors wanting to make some money from their efforts. So let's focus on this specific software and not get sidetracked.
-40hz (March 09, 2011, 03:31 PM)
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I did read the article- now when you linked, and before when App first published it.  It does have points, and does give useful information.  But a lot of the rampant almost fanatical negativity was, and still is FUD.  Not in an intentionally negative way, but certain inflammatory terms used automatically trigger certain responses in readers, and at that point rational discussion of the salient points go out of the window in a lot of cases.

However, why people who are looking for sales don't just release their app as trialware will always be a mystery to me. Unless, of course, it's because the market has made it clear it doesn't consider the app worth paying for to begin with - hence the author's need to "monetize" as opposed to sell it.

Note too that Microsoft is flagging OC as adware/spyware. And nobody is more committed to the concept of having people pay to use software than they are. Draw whatever conclusions you will from that. But I don't think FUD can legitimately be one of them.
 :)
-40hz (March 09, 2011, 03:31 PM)
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Because there's always more than one way to monetize anything, and looking at only one revenue stream as the source of income for your application will put you at a disadvantage from the start?  For some applications, this seems like a better way to take advantage of revenue streams than charging for them- perhaps because while the app is worth the money, the sector it's target at isn't one that's easy to break into/willing to pay for software?  Or a myriad of other reasons...

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