[tokyodude]

App yes, Library no?

IIRC VLC's icon has a Christmas tree on Christmas. That's cool. Some library having a Christmas day Easter egg, not so cool.

That said the lesson here is probably that if you're doing any serious dev you really should be reading the source before putting the library in your app and, you should be forking the library into your repo or into your own package manager server and only taking updates you've reviewed.

[bayindirh]

If I was developing such a library, I'd add easter eggs into the code, tie all of them to a single, big switch and disable it by default.

Last, but not the least, I'll document it as follows:

    This code contains easter eggs which are disabled by default. If you want to enable them, set easter_eggs_enabled=true. Please note that, the eggs have their own time, and it won't make them enabled all the time.

[killaken2000]

I'm not a fan of the VLC icon change but I use something else because of it. It's their choice to include it an my choice not to use it.

Disabling it is easy enough but I have other things to do.

[bayindirh]

I wonder why a small icon change is so bothering. Care to elaborate?

[zimpenfish]

"What other hidden surprises are in the code?" would be one thought. If you can't trust them to leave the icon alone, what else can't you trust them with?

(Note that I don't necessarily agree with this but it's an obvious path.)

[bayindirh]

From my perspective, it's the opposite. I think that "If they're smart and fun to implement a Christmas hat on the icon, they're possibly nice guys, and won't do something sinister".

This is coming from my 20+ years of experience with computers and applications. I've seen that programs with easter eggs may have some stupid bugs, but won't have something sinister inside them. OTOH, applications with some very serious and no-nonsense attitude has the most advanced "phone home" mechanisms.

This is my experience though. I'd happily stand corrected if I'm wrong.

[zimpenfish]

> This is my experience though. I'd happily stand corrected if I'm wrong.

I don't think anyone can call your own experience "wrong" per se. I'd point to the Google logograms as a "smart and fun [easter egg]" per your definition but they are definitely one of the more sinister corporations.

[bayindirh]

> I'd point to the Google logograms as a "smart and fun [easter egg]" per your definition but they are definitely one of the more sinister corporations.

That's a fair angle :)

[tokyodude]

Does it bother you that HN colored the numbers on the left column of the front page red and green today for Christmas? Do all these Firefox easter eggs also bug you?

https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/easter-eggs-come-from-foxes...

[de_watcher]

My Jenkins is stuck with a Christmas hat forever...