@Alex Papadimoulis said:
From reading articles, opinions, etc., from the FireFox team, I get the impression that they have the same or similar mindset as the "Linux commie" crowd*. This crowd does not believe in "intellectual property" and believes that creative work (music, software, etc) contributes to the betterment of society and should be unencumbered and free to derive from. They do not believe in copyright, patents, DRM, or anything -- including advertising -- that puts restrictions or a price on creative work.
AFAIK Linux Commies do believe in copyright (that's after all the foundation of the GPL). They also believe that copyright shouldn't be valid for a hundred years including and after the final demise of the author. Most "Linux Commies" (e.g., followers of R.M.S.) don't have any beef against copyright but would like to see it's length reduced. They do, on the other hand, have a beef against software patents (as they reduce everyone's freedom and ability to create, and every day shows that they do stiffle innovation in the IT sector if not in the "real world") and against DRM (which... duh... do nothing except reduce the consumer of the freedom i.e., the freedom of the ones who pay for the content in the first place).
They, on the other hand, never said that you couldn't sell your work, the product of your labour. And quite a few people seem to manage selling GPL'd software while complying with the GPL.
@Alex Papadimoulis said:
I don't use Firefox, but from what I've seen of it, it's incredibly easy (just a few clicks) to download and install extensions.
It is indeed.
@Alex Papadimoulis said:
I would categorically ban such extensions on principle.
Pray tell, on which principle, the principle that the consumer shouldn't have any right in saying what can happen on his property (my browser is my property, not yours)? The principle that the consumer should be mere cattle, a brainless entity swallowing ads and junk food all day long?
@Alex Papadimoulis said:
Such endorsement of ad-blockers reinforces my belief that the FireFox leads are "Linux commies" and that the ubiquitousness of their product would be detrimental to the "free with ads" paradigm most of us have come to enjoy.
Since when is the belief that you should be able to do whatever you want to on your property "commie"? If anything it's libertarian to an extreme. My browser is my property, not yours, and even though i'm indeed visiting your website as soon as the information leaves your server it becomes mine. Period. When a script runs it runs on my machine in my browser using my resources and I should be able to disable or ban it, and when an image is displayed it's displayed in my machine on my browser using my resources and I should be able to refuse to display it.
And you, as the site owner, are free arbitrarily to refuse to handle the request of anyone if you so wish to.
Nothing even remotely communist in that, unless communist theories have changed a lot in the last 50 years or so.
To stay in-topic, as you probably have guessed from my post, I do have an ad blocker, it's Adblock Plus. I also don't block ads in a conscient way, I use the (extremely popular) Filterset.G adblock filter list. My reason? Too many ads on most sites, when you have more ads than content it's unbrearable, and most IT websites are overridden by ads. I should unblock the websites I visit often (even though i never click on ads), but since the ad-blocking itself is now done automagically and behind the scene (including the updating of the blocklist itself) I mostly don't even remember that I'm blocking ads, except when I have to use a browser that doesn't feature ad-blocking and I have to swim in a sea of crappy, flashy, moving, annoying and far too noticeable ads.