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Comment by novafunc | Hacker News Reader

Anubis's primary goal is to prevent web scrapers from DDoSing a website. It's not meant to be an unbeatable challenge or only allow humans like Google's more privacy-invasive captchas.

You do the proof of work, you get the content. Not all web scrapers are willing to do the work, which reduces the strain put on web servers.

It's by no means a perfect system. It's goals in part prevent it from doing so. It tries to not be too annoying for humans, to not block real users, and not be privacy invasive.

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>tries not to be annoying

The little anime girl is pretty off putting. I bounce when I see it.

It’s meant to be both funny AND highly unprofessional; Anubis makes money of licensing a version of the firewall where you can change the image.

It’s a good strategy; personal websites and blogs can display the anime girl without fear, and companies that care about their image end up paying. Win-win.

It appears in places where that are neither personal websites nor blogs, and that are places where professionals conduct work.

For instance: The act of searching the Arch Linux wiki produces a picture of the anime girl.

(Should I just not use Arch professionally?)

If you care that much, you can donate money to Arch to buy a commercial license, or inform your sales rep that you find their conduct unprofessional.

Or, yes, you can take the presence of the free version as a sign that the professional service is freeloading, and take your business elsewhere.

I see.

I take this to mean that we have some kind of (perhaps-fundamental) difference in the ways in which we understand how free software works.

(That's OK, comrade. I'm not here to change you.)

I suspect we do. In my view, people using free software take the gift they were given as-is, and if they don’t like it, they either contribute in a way the giver appreciates, or move on. They certainly don’t whine about their free gift online, and especially don’t complain that their free gift isn’t professional enough for them.

So no bug reports. No wishing that things could be improved in any way.

All users all must take what they are given. If they do not like what they are given, then they must only contribute in the ways that are prescribed from on-high. No freeloading. No complaining. No discussion, even in the form of a comment on a completely separate, independent forum. If they are unwilling or unable to follow these rules, then they must pound sand.

Am I on the right track here with the intended restraint?

Yes, they have no obligations to you, just as you have no obligations to them (beyond whatever licenses apply to their content).

Indeed. They owe me nothing, and I owe them nothing.

We are all free to have a slice of the infinitely-divisible cake, and also to talk about it when that behooves us. We can say positive things when it suits us, but we can also say whatever else we wish to as well.

Arch is a largely non-commercial project. You’re free to not use it, if that’s where you draw your personal line. You must be a really principled person then, who no doubt also won’t tolerate much worse offenses.

I don't see what's so offensive about it. If it had huge boobs or something that would be one thing, but it's just a regular mascot character. Out of all the "necessary evils" that get inserted to keep a service above water, that anime girl image is the least offensive one I can think of. It's still completely normalized to show ads for porn on sites like youtube. Captchas are an insult, with the "photo challenge" type being a full on slap in the face most of the time. I would look at 1000 anime girls to avoid one street sign captcha.

I don't know what it is, either. But it creeps me out and makes me feel dirty every time it shows up.

It does this in ways that a boring corpo captcha or Cloudflare prompt do not, so it's presence of this artwork more than it is the temporary time-wasting impediment that seems to do it.

People have irrational reactions to things sometimes, and I am people.

There’s nothing funny about it? Also seems like a lose for the personal websites and blogs when people bounce because of it.

Anubis’s silly, harmless images do a good job of driving away the traffic I don’t want on my personal site. Anyone who couldn’t abide seeing a cartoon for half a second wouldn’t likely be fun to interact with.

People are mysterious indeed. Letting a widely accepted png cause that much discomfort sure is interesting.

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