PCSX2 development plan,thoughts,contributions

[Blyss Sarania]

Which do you consider spyware, Steam or AVG Toolbar?

Which do you consider adware? AVG Toolbar or Google Chrome?

Well, I don't necessarily trust what companies say in their EULA, it's been proven several times(Origin is an example) that data that wasn't supposedly being transferred and saved, actually is. But assuming I did, then to your first point, no I would not consider Steam spyware. However to your second point, I think that both AVG toolbar and Google chrome collect data I don't want them to collect. I don't use either as a result. They are similar in my mind, except that Chrome provides something actually useful while doing what it does.

Let's say AVG was an actual virus scanner, then maybe scanning viruses on my computer would make sense, right? That way it interacting with my files But it's not; we're installing a TOOLBAR, it says that plainly in the installer. It has no business EVEN touching anything other than the browsers, which it obviously does. Where the hell does it say in the tiny blurb of text that it's allowed to disable my plugins for my browsers? Change my preferences, even beyond the homepage? And injecting fake download buttons in my browser sure is a legitimate thing for a toolbar to do.

In my experience, it did not disable any of the other plugins in the browser. Or change any of her preferences. As far as the fake download buttons, I didn't leave it installed long enough to see that, but given the nature of ads, it would not surprise me if it did that.

How many users do you really expect to click through the full page of information on the AVG toolbar in the installer of PCSX2? I really don't know. Can we at least agree the AVG Toolbar is undesirable to 99% of the people who have installed it? Let's check the top search result for "AVG Toolbar" in google, from a private window in Firefox. Oh, a GUIDE on how to remove it! It ends up above the actual AVG products themselves!

To click through the full page of information? Not many. To actually read what's going on in the installer, I'd expect that the majority would at least read there. The reason I think this is because of the presence of options and check boxes. To most people that says "Hmm, a choice to make, better read." 99% of people? No. A lot of people? Yeah, probably. But the same people it would be undesirable to are the people that I would expect to be most likely to have read the box and disable it in the first place.

Anyway, I've stated my opinion completely and fully. I have most of the information myself, so I really don't think I am gonna change my opinion. Everyone else is of course welcome to theirs. If it seriously bothers you that much, then I can understand that. And if it makes you want to not help, that is unfortunate but I can understand that too. But in reality, the person you are discussing this with most has no control of what happens. If you believe as strongly as you do, and you want to cause a change, then the best thing is to wait for the developers to respond. Or send them a private message with your concerns.

[JMC47]

Okay, fair enough. If you aren't changing your mind regardless of what is said, and I'm not planning on changing my mind, we won't accomplish anything.

One last note: You do realize the adware route is not only the default but "recommended" in your installer?

Anyway. Good talking to you. I'm glad we at least know one another's position.

[Blyss Sarania]

Yeah, I know that. To be honest I am not happy with the wording in the installer. I am glad it says what it's doing, but I'd like it to be a little more blunt.

[JMC47]

Okay, yeah, that looked a bit weird when I noticed. I think that's just a leftover from a template though; most installers like that just have it like that by default.

[dabore]

toolbar debate again? you don't want me on that. you'd all die with empty pockets. i'm the antiad.

[avih]

I think we should split the plugins discussion into a new thread.

As for the AVG toolbar, agreed, it's not fun to uninstall. TBH, I'm pretty sure we've added at the the download section a tool or a link to a tool from AVG itself which should completely remove the toolbar (I never checked that it was actually added to the website). But I can't find it there now :/

Anyway, let me tell you a little secret which will soon become public.

Our partnership with AVG ended before this discussion started. We've known when we partnered with them that it's gonna be a short stint, because they told us so (though they couldn't say exactly when it would happen). We think this is due to MS and Google recent war on the toolbar business, which we do think is a good war. So we considered it as an experiment to begin with (we did actually visit their offices in person BTW - it was THAT important to us to know whom we're dealing with).

So about 2 month ago IIRC AVG told us that they will not be able to continue. We didn't yet remove the toolbar because we didn't want to release another version just for the sake of removing the toolbar, but the deal has ended already regardless.

What we defended on this and the other thread was NOT the toolbar itself, since we knew we're removing it anyway. We defend our right to bundle software as long as we do it decently, and as long as the bundled software is not complete crap. It's not even defending, we're not arguing this because this is our choice to make and not others.

However, if the outcome of our choices is bad, or more bad than we though, then we do care about this and sure, tell us so (e.g. that the AVG toolbar is bad because messes up the system, like JMC47 says - great info, thanks). So in retrospective, AVG ended up maybe worse than we considered it.

We're not saints (a saint would bundle only unicorns, right?), but we do honestly care, listen, and will try to fix mistakes once we notice them.

Meanwhile, in part due to this feedback and because this deal has ended, we're preparing a new installer without the toolbar and will release it soon.

[Nobbs66]

I think we should split the plugins discussion into a new thread.

As for the AVG toolbar, agreed, it's not fun to uninstall. TBH, I'm pretty sure we've added at the the download section a tool or a link to a tool from AVG itself which should completely remove the toolbar (I never checked that it was actually added to the website). But I can't find it there now :/

Anyway, let me tell you a little secret which will soon become public.

Our partnership with AVG ended before this discussion started. We've known when we partnered with them that it's gonna be a short stint, because they told us so (though they couldn't say exactly when it would happen). We think this is due to MS and Google recent war on the toolbar business, which we do think is a good war. So we considered it as an experiment to begin with (we did actually visit their offices in person BTW - it was THAT important to us to know whom we're dealing with).

So about 2 month ago IIRC AVG told us that they will not be able to continue. We didn't yet remove the toolbar because we didn't want to release another version just for the sake of removing the toolbar, but the deal has ended already regardless.

What we defended on this and the other thread was NOT the toolbar itself, since we knew we're removing it anyway. We defend our right to bundle software as long as we do it decently, and as long as the bundled software is not complete crap. It's not even defending, we're not arguing this because this is our choice to make and not others.

However, if the outcome of our choices is bad, or more bad than we though, then we do care about this and sure, tell us so (e.g. that the AVG toolbar is bad because messes up the system, like JMC47 says - great info, thanks). So in retrospective, AVG ended up maybe worse than we considered it.

We're not saints (a saint would bundle only unicorns, right?), but we do honestly care, listen, and will try to fix mistakes once we notice them.

Meanwhile, in part due to this feedback and because this deal has ended, we're preparing a new installer without the toolbar and will release it soon.

Thank you! That toolbar can be a royal pain to remove. Kind of reminds me of motioninjoy as far as how much irritation it can cause.

Also I don't mean to be rude, but why couldn't you guys just tell us this from the beginning? It would have saved a few arguments.

[rama]

First, let's talk about what it did. In Firefox, you get nifty toolbar, new homepage, search bar regardless of what you want. This is easy to see and change, but annoying.

Now, in chrome, on top of all of that, what does AVG do? It DISABLES your adblock and injects advertisements into the browser! Worse yet? It's separate from the plugin install. Even with it disabled, there are still these "special" ads that I know sure as hell weren't there before.

Disabling adblock and replacing download buttons is obviously not okay.
It never did that in our tests and I just tried to replicate it with no result. It doesn't do this here and we wouldn't have okay'd it like that.

Edit:
Uninstall works fine with just add/remove programs.

[Blyss Sarania]

Also I don't mean to be rude, but why couldn't you guys just tell us this from the beginning? It would have saved a few arguments.

I gotta agree. To be honest(and I am not making accusations here), it totally appears like the PCSX2 team went from defending it to: "Oh, we were gonna remove that all along." It looks like a political position reversal to me.

Maybe that's not what it was, but I honestly question the decision that this information wasn't brought to light before now. I seriously hope there was a good reason.

Whatever, at least people will stop this horrendous discussion now. I am so sick and tired of it I have considered not even logging in on some days because of it.

[rama]

It is normal not to prattle about money matters. There's legal matters and contracts so you keep it low.
In this case it really just is as written: The deal ended so we remove it.