The bottom line is that GIMP didn't want to be associated with tricking its users into installing borderline malware. If a program's installer is filled with traps that you have to carefully watch for to avoid - that sets off huge blaring alarms in the heads of most experienced users.

This is especially a problem for the open-source community, which still struggles to get a fair comparison with commercial software in the corporate IT world. If even major software gets saddled with nonsense like SourceForge is trying to pull, it could set back progress by years.

SourceForge had better smarten up before it becomes a ghost town. GIMP is certainly not going to be the last high-profile departure if things don't change.

While we're at it, the summary of this story was blatantly whitewashed. Mentioning the parent company link should be a bare minimum, not an excuse to abandon all pretense of impartiality.

How can the attack include military systems used for nuclear commands, yet not include any secure classified systems?

When they made a list of which government systems should be secured, they decided to leave the nukes off that list?!

The two Gaming companies who's business practices I despise the most are fighting? AWESOME! Though I hope EA wins this one, at least they pay the companies they rape the innovation out of.

Time for a car analogy! Cellular bandwidth is like the traffic on your morning commute. Recently there have been complaints of traffic jams, delays, and generally slow transit speeds. However, adding more lanes to the roads is expensive, so instead the road operator has come up with a fantastic solution. They will sell Turbo Boost buttons for drivers to install in their cars. If wielders of a turbo button feel that their commute is too slow, then by pressing the button they can technomagically force all other drivers to exit the lane the button user is driving in, thus clearing a fast path for them. Of course the lane changes aren't forced on other button wielders.

This amazing innovation is sure to solve the traffic problems in no time.

This and many other privacy issues can and should be fixed by use of proper Firefox add-ons. Sure we can decry the practice and wish that in an ideal world corporations would not do such things, but that's a waste of time. Use things like Adblock Plus, Ghostery, Beef Taco, NoScript, and Better Privacy.

I don't even see those Facebook buttons. Since in practice nobody will manually mess with their cookies each time they log out of a site, and may even want to visit other sites while still logged in, this is the only realistic solution.