FYI: Kite as a company had a backlash from the community after they acquired popular Python packages and injected their spyware and ads. So far they've learnt from that lesson, but who knows if they'll stay that way.
We hear you. We agree this was a mistake, and over the ~three years since then we've listened to the community, for example by releasing local processing for Kite.
Why is "send usage metrics" still on by default in the Kite.app preferences?
I was prepared to give Kite another shot but seeing that checkbox just made me lose confidence. Caddy almost got destroyed by this! Please please please reconsider and make telemetry opt-in, you don't have enough goodwill given Kite's history with exfiltration, and the product has access to too much vital information to be playing around with users trust like this.
Were the minds that decided this was a good idea in the first place fired from the company? I guess it was greenlighted from the very top. No idea how anybody could ever trust you ever again.
That’s actually worse than the last time I remember them being in the limelight for questionable privacy regarding sending your code to their servers.
The ads were specifically added into two community supported Atom extensions after Kite employees got contributor access to both of them. For those curious, here are the relevant issues:
Suggesting alternatives is fine in principle, but astroturfing a competitor's thread is not. You guys have crossed the line. Please stop and do not do this on HN again.
I suppose I should add that we have no interest in the competition or which product is better, but we have a strong interest in preserving the integrity of HN threads, and the community demands that of us.