[Greasemonkey] Trixie: Greasemonkey for IE

[Matt McCarthy]

Trackback alert: http://radar.oreilly.com/

Is Trixie written by
Microsoft?<http://www.mozdev.org/pipermail/greasemonkey/2005-May/002882.html>
Posted to del.icio.us <http://del.icio.us/> by marc 

Mark Pilgrim notes that the domain is registered near Microsoft; note also 
that traceroute goes through ntwk.msn.net <http://ntwk.msn.net>. Seems like 
they would have been more subtle, though......

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http://www.mozdev.org/pipermail/greasemonkey/2005-...<http://www.mozdev.org/pipermail/greasemonkey/2005-May/002882.html>

 
Pardon my rich formatting and the likely consequent disaster in plaintext 
clients. I don't see a way to get a permalink and I don't see marc's 
Delicious username anywhere.

I don't think this is necessarily scandal. Most of us here are employed, but 
that doesn't mean all we do is a result of directives from our corporate 
masters. I see no reason to doubt Trixie Dev's innocuous explanation at this 
point.

FWIW, I also saw Trixie on Waxy Links last night with a less-than-flattering 
description:

> (closed source and, in my mind, somewhat unnecessary)
> 

On 5/31/05, Mark Pilgrim <pilgrim at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 5/31/05, Aaron Boodman <zboogs at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.bhelpuri.net/Trixie/Trixie.htm
> 
> Initial thoughts:
> - Neither the web site nor the application itself have any licensing
> or copyright information. As there is no visible source code link, so
> I assume that the entire application and all of the author's
> pre-installed scripts are under a strict copyright.
> - Speaking of authors, I can not find any contact information on the
> author, not even a name. The domain was registered on August 7, 2004
> to a Kaushik Sridharan <skaushik at hotmail.com>. I would guess that
> this is also the author, given the plethora of Hotmail-specific
> scripts that come with the application. And because he included an
> @author tag in this script:
> http://www.bhelpuri.net/Trixie/Scripts/HotmailPreviewer.user.js
> - I would also point out that the domain was registered to a street
> address less than four miles from Microsoft headquarters:
> 
> http://maps.google.com/maps?spn=0.049500,0.088117&saddr=8935+160th+Ave+NE+redmond+wa&daddr=1+Microsoft+Way,+Redmond,+WA+98052
> - Speaking of scripts, the application comes with nine scripts
> pre-installed, although two are disabled by default (including a
> stripped down version of my Butler script). This means that Trixie
> adds significant default behaviors to several sites. Early versions
> of Greasemonkey did this, but not to this extent, and current versions
> of Greasemonkey do not come with any scripts pre-installed.
> - Speaking of Butler, the derivative script that comes with Trixie
> (also posted here:
> http://www.bhelpuri.net/Trixie/Scripts/RemoveGoogleAds.user.js ) does
> not have any licensing information, in violation of the GPL. I don't
> believe that shipping a GPL user script with the application
> necessitates licensing the entire application under the GPL, since it
> is very loosely "linked" (simply deleting the script does not affect
> the application), but the script itself is most definitely required to
> be licensed under the GPL.
> - The Trixie script repository
> <http://www.bhelpuri.net/Trixie/Scripts.htm> is not editable. "If you
> have a Greasemonkey script that will work on IE/Trixie, send us mail
> (trixie at bhelpuri.net) with the url to your script and we will add it
> here."
> - Despite meeting all the prerequisites, it doesn't actually work on
> my system. Web pages that should be affected by the pre-installed
> scripts do not appear to be changed in any way. I get a "Trixie
> options" item in the IE Tools menu, but nothing happens when I select
> it.
> - On the bright side, it does not appear to install any spyware
> (tested with Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware).
> 
> Filed under: things that don't work that people will constantly ask me 
> about
> 
> --
> Cheers,
> -Mark
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> 



-- 
When I am king, you will be first against the wall
With your opinion, which is of no consequence at all.
-Radiohead, "Paranoid Android"
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