The war of browser plug-ins


At some point this had to happen – browser plug-ins with opposite agendas coming into some sort of conflict. Such is the case of the recent updating of the well known NoScript plug-in and the equally well known Adblock Plus plug-in, both for the Firefox browser.

The simmering war of words has been most apparent on the Adblock Plus blog where Wladimir Palant, the author of the plug-in, keeps in touch with the users of the plug-in (I was unable to find a blog for NoScript). It was a recent post that Wladimir first talked about the problem that a lot of plug-in authors face, especially if their work becomes popular as is the case with his; and the NoScript, plug-in has. It is a problem of time versus earning a living.

Many of the most well known plug-ins are still a labor of love with their authors doing all the work in their spare time. The problem is that once you cross the line from being just one of the many available plug-ins to being one of the plug-ins that devoted fans of browsers like Firefox install by default. It is these plug-ins that require more and more of the author’s time. Time that some authors are trying to find ways to get paid for.

In his post Wladimir made it quite obvious that he understands why some authors may go the monetization route but what worried him was the methods that would be used.

So far, getting money for your work ranges from begging for donations over post-install pages with ads (where some go pretty far to make sure these ads are seen) to showing ads in the extension itself. Now I am afraid that we might see another development that we already know from desktop applications: extensions that change your homepage/default search engine or install unrelated extensions if you aren’t careful enough to opt-out.

It wasn’t long after that post that he found himself having to deal with a competing plug-in that in order to monetize itself was making modification to his plug-in, Adblock Plus. From today’s post on the escalating war of words

What followed was a small war — the website would add various tricks to prevent Adblock Plus with EasyList from blocking ads, EasyList kept adjusting filters. Then, a week ago a new NoScript version was released. A few days later I noticed first bug reports — apparently, Adblock Plus “glitches” were observed with this NoScript version, especially around NoScript’s domains (but not only those). When I investigated this issue I couldn’t believe my eyes. NoScript was extended by a piece of obfuscated (!) code to specifically target Adblock Plus and disable parts of its functionality. The issues caused by this manipulation were declared as “compatibility issues” in the NoScript forum, even now I still didn’t see any official admission of crippling Adblock Plus. Clearly, NoScript is moving from the gray area of adware into dark black area of scareware, making money at user’s expense at any cost.

Now Wladimir has added an update to that post letting everyone know that this current battle has been won in that NoScript, through some pushing from the people responsible for the Mozilla Add-ons Policy, has had to stop modifying the Adblock Plus subscription filter. How long this quiet period will last is anyone’s guess but it belies a larger problem in the plug-in landscape; which Wladimir talked about – how do popular plug-in authors justify their time spent on these often complex pieces of code?

There are literally thousands of plug-ins available for just Firefox alone, often doing similar jobs and vying for user attention. Trying to set oneself apart from the pack is a difficult proposition even without having to consider if you want to make any kind of money from your work. Granted a large majority of plug-in authors are firm believers of the Open Source and GPL licensing model; but when you get to the level of popularity experienced by plug-ins like Adblock Plus and NoScript it can be harder to justify all the time spent on the project.

Throw in the fact that many of the users of one plug-in are going to be users of a similar; and to a degree competing, plug-in things might get a little nasty. This might only be one little skirmish but is is also a window onto a larger problem that the plug-in authors may be facing more and more as the popularity of plug-ins increases across the board. At some point people are going to want to find some way to be compensated for their time and warm and fuzzy words of encouragement aren’t going to be enough.

I expect we will see more things like this recent war of words happen more and more on the road forward.

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