ONLamp: Firefox versus AdSubtract: How Not to Compete with Open Source

“Recently I sat down at one of my old desktop machines, on which
I’d been running Internet Explorer with Windows 2000 (for no good
reason other than intertia and infrequent use). The browser was set
up to use AdSubtract, a cookie manager and ad and pop-up blocker I
had used for many years on Windows. AdSubtract was a great little
product, and it always took a while to readjust to the web without
it when I was using Safari or another browser.

“On this day, I fired up Internet Explorer and immediately saw a
pop-up ad. ‘Huh? What happened to AdSubtract?’ I thought. Then I
looked at the ad, and realized that it was from AdSubtract–the
product had used its upgrade notification function to place an ad
on my machine. ‘Wait–didn’t I buy this thing to block ads?’ I
thought…”

Complete
Story