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Comment by adamsmith | Hacker News Reader

Hi Ruben, founder of Kite here. I think this issue deserves a more thorough response because there are a lot of misrepresentations in the article.

One misrepresentation that I wanted to quickly highlight is that the autocomplete-python install flow has three steps, not just the one linked in to in the screenshot above. The other two are:

Enter their email address - https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/87728/28395016-dc7...

Read a warning, decide if they want to whitelist any files - https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/87728/28395021-e04...

Small technicality: these screenshots say that Kite is installing but it's actually only downloading the installer binary to memory; the actual install doesn't happen unless the user goes through all three steps.

It's also worth noting that if the user clicks "Add Later" no code is sent to the Kite servers for analysis until they whitelist a directory.

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You are trying to blame the user, but the design of this flow is to blame. It does not explain clearly what is going on.

It's funny seeing this now to see where I tripped up. When you say "enable access in /Users/ben", I guess 6-months-ago-me assumed it meant "enable access to code in /Users/ben when I am working on it". It felt a bit like an iOS permissions dialog, where I was giving you access to my filesystem. Parsing it now, I realise that the text above the button says "where enabled, your code is sent to our cloud".

You could argue I should have read that more carefully, but that copy doesn't scream to me "I'm about to upload all of the source code on your computer including proprietary stuff and secrets". Because that button was the default highlighted button, I assumed it wasn't going to do anything drastic like that. (It's like Ryanair having a big red "YES I WOULD LIKE INSURANCE" button, hiding the "no I don't want to spend $100" button somewhere in the small print.)

Above all, you certainly shouldn't have included that as a shady update to some Atom extension I was using.

> I think this issue deserves a more thorough response because there are a lot of misrepresentations in the article.

From the article:

> Smith also said that most of the negative reaction was due to confusion around what the tools actually do. (Connor pointed out that it’s not possible to review what Kite does, since it itself is not open source.) Then he blew this reporter off. “I apologize in advance that I can't answer any further questions,” he wrote. “I need to focus on other parts of the business, including continuing to improve the product for our users, and conflict like this is always doubly distracting.”

The above sounds like you were given the opportunity to explain things but shrugged it off as a distraction.

If it deserves a more thorough response, why hasn't that been given? Even in this reply you only "quickly highlight" one point.

Yeah, I came here to say exactly this.

Even with the additional steps and even with explicit whitelisting of directories (from screenshots it looks like it defaults to the user directory, which is just bad) before code's uploaded, the point is that Kite took over a useful, popular open source package, clearly hitching on to the popularity of the package to promote Kite, which is distasteful when it comes to OSS.

Why not fork the original autocomplete-python with one that has Kite enabled instead? Then users who want Kite or use Kite are able to do so, without screwing over everyone else who have no idea what Kite is and dont want anything to do with it.

Reminds me of software downloaded in the past that comes with some random search toolbar that gets installed in browsers. Annoying. Shady. Not cool.

This. That would have been the correct solution. Fork the code and offer their "Kite enabled" version separately. If Kite has to resort to these type of tactics to push their product it seriously makes me doubt it's efficacy. If they can't market their product based on it's merits, why would I want to use it?

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