Adobe wants Ninite to stop rolling out crapware-free Flash
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
The update process Adobe employs is a nag for admins, the constant flow of acrobat updates and flash updates is a bombardment of announcements which most users in a corporate environment don't have control over.
I prefer paying ninite for the hassle free service, rather then adobe who seem to have no clue or interest in making users life easier. From my perspective, i don't care who profits as long as I can achieve my goals with a minimum of hassle. Ninite provides this, Adobe does not.
That software-updates-as-a-service is now a thing is really a sad state of affairs, but if Ninite can make a go of it, right on.
In a similar vein, this is why Piriform cut them off from providing CCleaner via Ninite. Because automatic updating is a feature of CCleaner's business model, too. The paid version of CCleaner has automatic updates. Ninite was essentially taking that revenue model away from Piriform and using it for themselves. With free software supported by offers, Ninite is hiding those offers in exchange for cash. It's basically a paid ad-blocking service.
Speak for yourself; I only ever see it on system startup. I only reboot once every few months (and it doesn't respond to waking up from standby), but there's a new Adobe security panic every two weeks or so, so that's not really acceptable. Plus it opens as a pop-under window for some reason, so I'm generally unaware of it until I've opened a browser, which I'll then have to close and reopen.
The 'stealing revenue' argument is definitely valid, but in Adobe's case it's such a hateful method that I can't sympathize at all.
After some horrible experiences with Adobe Support, I've decided that Adobe as a company is crapware. I am sorry for e.g. some of the engineering talent there that may be doing good work. But, they (you) seem to exist these days within a horrible company organization.
Is it? If their (Piriform, as in the original example) model is based around providing a service for a product they release for free, but someone else can provide that service better, then perhaps they need to re-think their business model. Either be way cheaper, or provide something that Ninite can't or won't. Maybe even partner with Ninite and explain that your product can't exist without that revenue, so why not just integrate deeper and share a bit of revenue, rather than having it fail and upset customers of both parties.
I would be interested to know how you propose using Adobe flash updater to push out a critical security patch to 10k + enterprise users.
On an ideological level, I would look at whether they are stealing content and reselling it or just automating something the user would do for him/herself. It sounds like automating to me.
I make scripts to automate my workflows all the time, including the flash installer. (Though I don't download it as part of the script, I have pre-downloaded it and put it in a folder to use. So I have to manually get the latest before I run the script on a batch of machines.)
Frankly, just look at their website: https://ninite.com/updater/
Aren't there other free updaters?
Sure, but they don't work like Ninite Updater. With Ninite Updater it's one
step to download and install all your updates in the background at once.
I'm actually on adobe's side.
Wait, that's not right...
Nothing's wrong with being for-profit. Redhat's for profit, I like them. What I don't like is the cut of David's gib in this David and Goliath story.
If Adobe turned to Ubuntu and said "Hey, don't put our plugin in your repositories, we want to spam mcaffe at linux users". That would be a really good reason to get the pitchforks and torches out! Adobe is instead responding to another for-profit company who's removing adobe's advertisement in place of their own.
The consumer gains a little from this, yah they're less obnoxious, but they're still selling package management, what I would argue a fundamental operation in an OS, for the low low price of only 9.99.
This article is angry at Adobe for making Windows hard to use by baiting users. Ninite is guilty of the same crime, even if it's to a lesser extent.
I'm still confused at how making money destroys our credibility. It's a good thing for the people you trust with software updates to be profitable. Pro users paying us for extra features like remote mode lets us offer Ninite free for everyone else.
We don't even run ads on the free site because Pro users pay the bills and we love that we can save people from wasting time clicking Next Next Next.
because looking at the website, you sure look like a bog standard marketing pitch to the average consumer selling fundamental computer operations for a price.
At least Adobe isn't selling me the copy function at $3.99.
If you were coming from selling a service, that would be different (we aggregate a working ecosystem of programs ready for your selection, subscribe to our repository!), but you're not. You're selling a program more than a service.
I just find it incredulous to see the phrase "We deserve better than this" where "better" is having basic functionality sold to you.
Isn't Adobe a for profit company as well?
Why? Their software automates a repetitive and complex task thereby saving money. Some of the money saved goes to paying Ninite but everyone still wins.
The whole focus on Ninite charging is a red herring. This also has to do with the free installer that Ninite provides to people who do NOT pay for the Pro.
Our value is keeping the catalog up-to-date and putting a nice interface around the updating process. Not ad-blocking.
We actively uncheck toolbars for maybe 5 apps. If those apps removed their toolbar offers people would still use Ninite to track updates and automate work.
On profits XOR good: We do make money, but we also work really hard to do good as in http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
Our website is completely free (and ad-free) for home users. We save people from about 15 minutes of mindless installer work every second.
Our $9.99 home Updater product is just something to point home users at when they ask to donate to us. We're a company. We don't take donations.
We also run http://ninite.com/accessible to help visually-impaired people manage software. Actually, until last summer that was about the only way for people to install Flash with a screenreader http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2012/07/flash-player-in...
If publishers want to make updating their software artificially hard there's not a lot we can do except trust that people will see what's going on and move to other products.
Ninite's ability to group many products into a singular downloadable installer is heaven. Keep up the awesome work.
This is especially helpful for games/apps you are actively using (on the SSD) but when you're done, or not playing as much, it's still available, just not as fast.
Regarding profits XOR good, I agree that you can do both and hope it didn't seem like I was implying otherwise. PortableApps.com, though fully open source, is also a for-profit venture that also intends to do good. It just happens to not be turning a profit yet. We're working on a freemium model as well, but we decided against making our updater and app store a paid feature and against bundling in ads as it would negatively impact some of our users.
I was unaware that Adobe had accessibility issues but, considering the interface, it makes sense. So, let me commend you on assisting with that. We did some custom work to ensure accessibility in our products as we have a large contingent of folks it helps as well.
Regarding publishers making updating their software artificially hard, I'm with you on that. We've had more than one publisher refuse to appear in the PortableApps.com App Store and Updater for that very reason: they want to have users to visit their website on each new version to see offers. That's why the portable version of the app that's not on Ninite isn't available on PortableApps.com either, despite offering up possible alternative revenue streams and offering capabilities. So, we're in the same boat there.
We should have a chat sometime and see if there are any ways we could work together.
No, just no. Btw. anyone knows how to manually force flash to check for updates? And an easy way to check flash versions across all different browsers?
I guess that's marketing for you.
"Re: UN Resolution #XYZ (Attached PDF)" is how these things play out. You open the PDF and your computer develops, ah, magical new capabilities, like sending copies of everything you do to Eastern Europe or China.
It saddens me that we've gotten to a point where operating a service company for profit can't also be seen as doing good. Everyone has to pay the bills (and maybe even be rewarded for their efforts?), even the do-gooders.
The value Ninite creates is worth $10 a year (is the point in the article).
As a user of the free version of CCleaner, I'm almost certain it also has auto updates, unless they removed that in a very recent version.
Ninite could potentially allow users to bypass the OP's site, which could clearly cause the OP some irritation.
No, it does not. Simply put, giving end-users popups for system maintenance is flatly unacceptable.
Maybe CCleaner should rethink that one, that is an awful business model. I wonder if they do the same thing with their OS X version too, because if so they might want to have a chat with the MacUpdate Desktop folks too.
IMO you can't blame app update tools for breaking a business model. That's a really idiotic business model to begin with. Charging for updates, fine. But charging for the ability to auto-check for updates? There is a reason nobody else in the industry does that. Because it's stupid.
When I bring up a new system, I just go to Ninite, check some stuff and I'm done. For most machines, there is nothing else to do.
I suppose this is sort of a cautionary tale... "Don't try to take your installer back from Ninite after they've showed everyone how it can be so much better."
I don't seem to have a problem using separate installers for something like Blender, but the activation energy seems too high for installing "small" utilities[1].
That said, if I could get larger applications from Ninite, I'd pull from there in a heartbeat!
[1] Utilities may not /actually/ be small.
Punctuation. It's the difference between "Let's eat, Grandma" and "Let's eat Grandma"
On the one hand I can see why Adobe wants total control over their installers, but I really wish they could also see that a lot of people simply don't want it.
Thanks to this move, I'll be banning the flash plugin outright. I hope that makes Adobe happy.
| Additional Restrictions (we are working on these!)
|
| - Some videos with ads are not yet supported (they
| will play in the Flash player)
|
| - On Firefox and Opera, only videos with WebM
| transcodes will play in HTML5
|
| - If you've opted in to other testtube experiments,
| you may not get the HTML5 player (Feather is
| supported, though)
Being forced to use a specific browser hardly means "it's no longer your problem".
But, publishers can license their software under whatever terms they want. They could forbid this sort of automation in the license, or even forbid Ninite specifically by name. As far as we can tell there's no right to automate your own machine that prohibitions like that would be violating.
I think the only defense here is public backlash (thanks everyone!) and/or boycott.
You're referring to the EULA, right? Is that enforceable in court? I've heard mixed opinions in the past on this topic from legal experts.
I don't think either would come into play here.
You are simply deploying the MSI and/or applying MSTs to the file. Configurations can be done after the package install...
If ninite cant do it, i dont see why MS/Citrix/Wyze would be able to.
e.g If you want to distribute closed source tools and software without sorting out a license first, your going to have a hard time because often this is exactly how free (in terms of price) software companies make their money.
If you are not paying attention - which most people don't - you'll be installing unwanted software, because so much relies on basically crappy software (Flash and Java). Actually, that makes them crappy is their ubiquitousness. Even if you seldom use Flash or Java applets, you'll often find yourself having them installed, because there is that one site that needs one or the other.
Now, people like us with the technical knowhow know how to get around that (disable plugins; flashblock, etc.), but most people just install these things whenever there are updates, each is a change of getting crapware along with them. And Java is quite often updated.
The folks I was replying to seemed to think that adobe stopping them was anti free market. I just wanted to clarify that that meant they didn't agree with copyright in any form, which is quite an extreme position.
Adobe gets to decide on the distribution method, whether with or without Ninite. There's nothing stopping Adobe from bundling McAfee with Flash in such a way that it becomes impossible to install Flash without McAfee, it's a free market after all. Instead Adobe gave users a choice as to whether or not to install McAfee, and Ninite helps users express that choice.
> they didn't agree with copyright in any form
The article doesn't say anything about copyright or DMCA. Nobody else has expressed any view on copyright in this thread. The only person in this thread who is talking about copyright is you.
--edit-- And it could still be a copyright violation if the terms of the license require non-automated install. As it's adobe's product they get to say how it is copied (installed).
Please know the difference between bad/customer unfriendly handling of installers/updaters, and actually bad software.
That's the problem - the 'bad' installer/update makes good software into 'bad' software
Both Sun and Oracle fucked up on the naming.
While Java admittedly has a solid underlying core, the criticism is for the entire platform, which has some significant problems, some technical, some security, and many organizational.
That said, I'm not sure what technical problems you're referring to. The JVM seems to work quite well on all platforms, even if it can be kinda clunky to program in Java at times. (which is part of the reason I mentioned other languages) And yes, I know the JVM is slow to start. It isn't designed for small scripts. Use Python or something else for that.
If regular users were commonly aware of what browser plugins they actually need, and knew how to go through the list and disable the ones they actually didn't need, that would mitigate things somewhat.
If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.
On my Windows gaming box I get a dialog box that says jusched.exe : cannot verify certificate of somesubdomain.oracle.com. I don't know if I'm more or less at risk if I press "no", but I guess the average user is just going to press "yes". So I guess my Java is now out of date but I'm not going to install software with admin privileges if there's a problem in validating certificates.
I will never ever install Java on a Windows box again. I did install it because I wanted to play a game written in Java. The game was unplayable because it was so slow and jerky - because it was written in Java.
There may be bits and pieces of cool tech inside, but for the vast majority of computer users, Java is crapware.
However, if Adobe were to force Ninite to drop Flash -- we would have quickly dropped Flash from our corporate network, and probably have been for the better even with a few users complaining that their favorite time-wasting website/game no longer works.
Ninite could easily circumvent this by giving people a choice to include the adware. 99.999% of users obviously won't make that choice, but Ninite puts that responsibility back with its users.
What I love about linux is that almost always you have an interface to manage software (apt/fabric/etc...) out-of-the-box.
Ninite Pro. Ok, not bad. But personally I don't like the "subscription" model.
Making software bundles, rolling them out and updating them can be made by IT dep. itself. It's not such a great and difficult job.
And again, how about clenaup with Ninite? When I decide to use its bundle will it manage older versions of %SOFTWARENAME% for me?
schtasks /delete /tn "Adobe Flash Player Updater"
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It's actually complementary to most of us....
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