[Sparkle] Appfresh abuse

[Pierre Bernard]

The easiest solution would probably be to remove out the appcast URL  
from your Info.plist. Put it in some other PLIST or hardcode it.  
AppFresh would no longer detect Sparkle compatibility.

Or do they keep appcast URL on file?

Pierre


On 23 May 2008, at 02:07, Charles D. H. Williams wrote:

> I am experiencing problems caused by an application called AppFresh  
> which appears to be becoming quite popular and is already costing me  
> a significant amount of bandwidth. This is because a lot of people  
> download my application (MacSpice), never get to grips with it and  
> have it lying around for a rainy day. I publish frequent updates.
>
> I only want users to check my AppCast and download my application if  
> they have actually run it recently. AppFresh seems to want to  
> download every update even for dormant users. This is wasting  an  
> ever-increasing amount of BW and is interfering with my ability to  
> collect usage statistics.
>
> I contacted the developer of AppFresh and asked him to modify the  
> behaviour of AppFresh slightly and his reply was less than  
> cooperative:
>
> "I'm sorry if AppFresh leads to more downloads of up-to-date  
> software, but that's exactly what our goal is."  "May I suggest  
> using Amazon's S3 hosting service ... hosting costs have never been  
> an issue for me ... You might want to ask for donations on your  
> website to cover the bandwidth costs incurred by the users of your  
> software ..." "Should you choose to block the download, we'll be  
> happy to inform complaining users about your decision, or we might  
> need to stop using an AppFresh-specific User-Agent string to ensure  
> user happiness."
>
> Now, I am entirely happy to provide free downloads for active users  
> (i.e. ca 2% of installed copies) of MacSpice but I object to having  
> to cover the bill for AppFresh pointlessly inciting potentially ca  
> 50,000 dormant users to download every minor release versions which  
> often appear at appear at weekly, sometimes daily, intervals.
>
> As its author has threatened to use fraudulent User-Agent strings to  
> defeat simple attempts to block AppFresh, I think it would be  
> prudent to install some anti-parasite protection into Sparkle. I  
> have in mind some form of authentication/authorization mechanism  
> perhaps like a simplified form of kerberos.
>
> What do others think?
>
> Charles
>
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