

Mistakes made and addressed - Mithrandir
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1299

======
pachydermic
I have been pretty pissed at Canonical lately for a number of missteps they
have made but a few of them do seem like legitimate mistakes. Mark is not
really a PR guy and you can tell - a lot of what he has done has just kind of
fanned the flames. I don't think I need to remind you, but even in a sarcastic
tone, "open source tea party" and "we have root" are inflammatory things to
say. I think he addresses some of these problems pretty well in this post, and
I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt here. Think about all that he has
accomplished and the amount that Ubuntu has helped the Linux community grow.

So kudos to him for having the balls to apologize. I accept that apology, and
I think that a lot of people (including myself) have had some venomous things
to say about him as well as Canonical which probably weren't fair. So we could
probably all back off here and focus on the real issues.

...but...

He's still not talking about the two elephants in the room.

The Unity lens is fundamentally fucked up. It should be opt-in. Period. It's
clearly an infringement on users' privacy and totally not in the spirit of
libre software or Linux. I can't really trust Canonical - even though they've
given us all so much - because of this issue. So long as they don't back down
from this I'm going to look at everything they do with a critical and possibly
cynical eye... it just _clearly_ looks like they're selling out their users.
It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish
it didn't have to be this way. I can't really fathom the amount of money Mark
has spent on Ubuntu. I don't really know how he can make it work as a
business. But the Amazon search in the lens just seems like a morally wrong
and short-sighted way to go.

The second issue which we all need to address is Mir. The technical arguments
are _completely over my head_ , but I feel like Canonical hasn't fully made
the case for why they've decided to fragment the community and do their own
thing. This could just be me not understanding what's going on, but pretty
much everyone who's developing this stuff seems to be on Wayland's side... why
is that (and is that)? It's worth considering, but I feel like Canonical
should be engaging the community, although with all the flaming that goes on I
can see why they don't. We all want the best free software we can get, but
some serious thought needs to be devoted to the ramifications and rationale
for having two display servers.

So that's the end of this long rant - let me know what you think.

~~~
jcastro
> It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I
> wish it didn't have to be this way.

I think many people confuse the smart scopes as "selling out to Amazon." The
lenses integrate a bunch of online sources, some are commercial, some are not.
You can try it by hitting the super key and doing something like
`wiki:metallica` or `code:discourse` (which searches github for projects,
etc.). There's something like 100 sources for information in the dash. Amazon
is just one of them.

It's closer to something like Watson for the Mac or the integrated search in
Android. Unfortunately people just assume that Ubuntu has "amazon spyware". If
you don't like the integrated online search it's one switch to turn it off and
Unity will revert to offline-only searches in the Dash.

~~~
pachydermic
How many of those sources have a "Buy for $x" button under them? And I don't
necessarily want to send the context of searches for content on my own
computer over the wire to Canonical's servers (especially these days).

I'm not saying the lens search is an awful thing for everyone. What I'm saying
is that they should have the button set to "off" by default, let people know
what is available to them, tell them about how it works, and then ask if they
want it or not. That's it. That's all it would take.

But even if they do that... isn't it still like the Java installer asking you
to install an Ask.com plugin or something? I mean... that's kinda the lowest
of the low for free (as in beer) software. Searching Wikipedia and for .git
repos online is one thing. Ads are different.

~~~
eitland
Google Desktop Search did a lot of things right. This was one of them.
After(?) the normal EULA text they would pop another one, something like:

READ THIS CAREFULLY, THIS IS NOT THE NORMAL YADDA-YADDA: If you enable Google
Desktop Search this and this will happen, which is most likely what you want
but you need to be aware of it. Do you want to enable?

~~~
cbhl
And what happened? Google Desktop Search was discontinued in 2011.

------
btilly
OK, great. So Ubuntu only accidentally sent the nasty letter, and didn't mean
to offend a lot of people who got offended with the tea party remark.

But no addressing of the privacy complaints the fixubuntu site had.

And explicitly only apologizing to non-technical critics just reinforces the
validity of the complaints that [http://blog.martin-
graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about...](http://blog.martin-
graesslin.com/blog/2013/10/thoughts-about-the-open-source-tea-party/) had.

~~~
eitland
I too was puzzled about the very specific language to apologise non-technical
people.

Isn't technical criticism what we want?

~~~
onli
I'm a bit confused by that section as well. Is Martins feedback given this
categorization technical feedback?

> _Unless critique is focused on improving the software in question it is
> pretty much a waste of the time of the people who are trying to improve the
> software in question._

The criticism was not focused on improving the software in question (Mir).
That could mean he regards it as waste of time - or if we do the additional
step and realize we are talking about the _software_ solution of the display-
server as a whole, it might be not meant by that.

I don't know.

------
leokun
Cool how Shuttleworth also apologized for the tea party remark. Seemed kind of
wrong for him to make it. Too bad he didn't address the gist of the fixubuntu
site though, he didn't even link to it I think. Avoiding making the Streisand
effect worse? Maybe he's already addressed the privacy issues?

~~~
m_ram
The privacy issues were discussed in Sept. 2012, a month before Quantal was
released.

22-Sept: Slashdot thread

[http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1319216/ubuntu-
will-n...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1319216/ubuntu-will-now-
have-amazon-ads-pre-installed/)

23-Sept: HN thread

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049)

23-Sept: Shuttleworth blog post

[http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182)

~~~
AsymetricCom
>discussed.

that's a different concept than addressed.

------
denrober
I just don't understand all this hate towards Canonical. You can turn it off.
Yes it was awkwardly rolled out but you can turn it off. What about google
search as you type? Google Analytics, hell even the Ghostery plugin tracks
data. Is this just the joy of supporting the underdog then hating them when
they succeed? Now I don't work for Ubuntu, I don't use Ubuntu (I do use Mint
which is derived from Ubuntu). When I think about the things that Apple and
Microsoft have done and do I really think adding remote search is really low
on the offense list. I mean they aren't making chemical weapons! Again most of
this comment is I just don't get all the hate.

~~~
honestcoyote
I can understand it. In these days of constant public and private
surveillance, some people want a haven and want it to be consistently safe.
One of the great selling points of Linux is that it was such a haven. Linux
was supposed to be one of the few things left which wasn't trying to make a
buck by watching you.

Ubuntu's little Amazon search wasn't very much compared to what Google,
Facebook, or the NSA have been up to, but it was still a violation of the
spirit of Linux and the unspoken rules and customs many people expect from
OSS. For many people, this is a betrayal.

~~~
jfoster
It's not as though they're trying to commit it into the kernel, though.
There's about a million other Linux-based operating systems that can be used.
Isn't it a healthy thing that they try to take different paths to success?
Canonical is trying to monetize the consumer side of their OS. Red Hat sells
support to enterprise. If you care about Linux, it should be a good thing that
these companies are trying to make some money and be sustainable businesses.

------
sagarm
At a high level, I accept Shuttleworth's apology. I do not believe that it is
a company policy to use trademark law to silence complaints.

Some nuances: > Judge the policy. In this case Canonical has a trademark >
policy that enables community members to use the marks > (good) and allows for
satire and sucks sites even in > jurisdictions where the local law does not
(great!). > Failing to have a policy would not be a bonus point in this review
:)

In the US, anybody (not just community members) has a clear right to use the
mark for satire and criticism. However, I'm sure there is some jurisdiction
where this is not the case. Shuttleworth is not claiming that the license is
needed in the US.

I was not aware of Shuttleworth's "tea party" comment; he was right to
apologize for making it. Based on his post, he was making an analogy between
certain types of unconstructive criticism of Ubuntu -- ad hominems, conspiracy
theories, and racism -- and behavior he associated with the tea party. That
behavior is, of course, not limited to just the tea party, nor is it true for
everyone associated with the tea party.

------
dlgeek
What was with the crack at Debian?[0]. Given how reliant Ubuntu is on Debian's
work and the amount historical animosity that there's been (a lot of which
Mark directly caused with the early interactions between the projects),
fanning the flames just seems incredibly stupid.

[0] "Debian started arguing about whether it should remove all references to
the distro-that-shall-not-be-named but then decided to argue about whether it
should enforce its own trademarks which lead to an argument about… oh never
mind."

~~~
nicholassmith
Someone submitted patches for Debian that changed Ubuntu to 'the disto which
shall not be name', and then it spiralled out from there.

------
forgottenpaswrd
Wow, I find it amazing how hard is for him to apologize for the "tea party"
remark.

It took him almost a month, then he uses another person's mistake as an
example, and then in a small remark at the end, he apologizes.

I guess it is "better late than never". But it speaks about how little social
skills some geeks have(he was programmer before billionaire).

------
eCa
> Please accept my apologies if you [...] felt offended by the label.

That's not an apology for using the label, that's a [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
apology_apology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology)

------
outside1234
Never Mark Shuttleworth's fault.

Someone playing politics with an open source project or some unknown staffer
who made a "mistake" \- never the culture he built or his over the top
response to said open source project not adopting the divine direction that he
has taken.

Nope, not Mark Shuttleworth's fault.

------
bowlofpetunias
I tend to think favorably of Canonical and very highly of Shuttleworth, but in
this case I'm already pissed of after reading only the first part of the post.
This is just highly manipulative PR speak.

First there's the repeated suggestion that Canonical is "generous" in allowing
all kinds of use of its trademark, where however that kind of use, like
satire, is protected by law. It's like saying "look how generous I am to stop
for pedestrians at a red light".

Second there's the ludicrous analogy between the a bug in the code and the
incident. A bug in code, no matter how bad, doesn't compare to an _act of
aggression_ aimed at a _specific party_. The internet did _not_ overreact, it
was Canonical that _acted_ with disproportionate aggression. Shuttleworth
fails to recognize that and still tries to cover it up by accusing his critics
of being unreasonable. A better technical analogy would not be a bug, but
deliberately installing malware.

This is not an apology. It's a defense combined with an underhanded attack an
Canonical's critics.

I wasn't one of the "vocal non-technical critics". Now I am. This attitude
stinks.

~~~
chc
> _First there 's the repeated suggestion that Canonical is "generous" in
> allowing all kinds of use of its trademark, where however that kind of use,
> like satire, is protected by law. It's like saying "look how generous I am
> to stop for pedestrians at a red light"._

Satire is not categorically protected by law and the usage in question was not
clearly satire by usual definitions. You should investigate matters more
carefully before getting "pissed," because your information seems to be coming
from questionable sources.

> _Second there 's the ludicrous analogy between the a bug in the code and the
> incident. A bug in code, no matter how bad, doesn't compare to an act of
> aggression aimed at a specific party. The internet did not overreact, it was
> Canonical that acted with disproportionate aggression._

All this was was words. To call a letter requesting that a site not infringe
on Canonical's trademarks "an act of aggression" is a bit of an overstatement.
Computer bugs have caused several orders of magnitudes greater harm.

~~~
msh
A lawyer sending threats is by most people's definition a act of aggression.

Especially when it's very doubtful there was infringement.

~~~
chc
It does not seem very doubtful to me. The site in question appropriated the
two main Ubuntu marks, displayed them as prominently as possible, carried no
other identifying marks of any kind and didn't include any kind of
disclaimer†. If all of that isn't enough for you to say, "Y'know, maybe he was
infringing," what exactly would he have to do for you to say that?

† It's worth noting that even officially sanctioned sites like UbuntuForums
take care to explain that they are not Canonical.

~~~
msh
He would have to be claiming to be officially ubuntu or leaving that
impression with people. I dont think there was any doubt that the site was not
a official ubuntu site. In my mind this falls under fair use as specifically
allowed, see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_(U.S._trademark_law)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_\(U.S._trademark_law\)).

If it would be infringement to use a trademark like that it would be
impossible to write about any trademarked product.

~~~
chc
> _He would have to be claiming to be officially ubuntu or leaving that
> impression with people._

Again, the word "Ubuntu" was the majority of the domain name and the majority
of the page header, and in the header it was accompanied by the Ubuntu logo.
Nowhere was any other branding used than Ubuntu's and he made no attempt to
clarify that he was not associated with Canonical or Ubuntu. If that isn't
enough to even be _potentially_ confusing, what is the bar you think he'd have
to clear? Does the page need to literally include the words "THIS IS UBUNTU
SPEAKING. I AM HEREBY CLAIMING TO BE UBUNTU"?

> _I dont think there was any doubt that the site was not a official ubuntu
> site_

Please remember that there are many thousands of people who log into Facebook
by Googling the phrase "Facebook login" and blindly clicking the first thing
that comes up
([http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_m...](http://readwrite.com/2010/02/11/how_google_failed_internet_meme)).
You are more technically savvy than most people, so the fact that this does
not confuse you doesn't mean it doesn't confuse anyone.

> _If it would be infringement to use a trademark like that it would be
> impossible to write about any trademarked product._

Not at all, for example, here's an Ars Technica review of Ubuntu:
[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/10/ubuntu...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/10/ubuntu-13-10-review-the-linux-os-of-the-future-remains-a-
year-away/)

Does the domain name substantially consist of the mark "Ubuntu"? No, and in
fact it isn't even part of the domain name. Does the header at the top of the
page say "Ubuntu"? No, it says "Ars Technica". Is the Ubuntu logo used as an
identifying mark on the page? No, it isn't. This page has a clear identity
besides "Ubuntu." It is clearly an article by Ryan Paul of Ars Technica about
Ubuntu, and all of the Ubuntu trademarks are used illustratively, not as
branding. The same is not true of FixUbuntu.

~~~
msh
Two things, do you really think that most most people will think a fixubuntu
site is a official ubuntu site? Does he in any way profit from the site?

The second thing, did you read my link about fair use? I think this pretty
much falls into it.

~~~
chc
> _Two things, do you really think that most most people will think a
> fixubuntu site is a official ubuntu site?_

Most? Probably not. But I think the potential is there for many to do so.

> _The second thing, did you read my link about fair use? I think this pretty
> much falls into it._

Yes, but as you have not explained why you think it applies here, I don't know
what you expect me to get from that link. I have already explained why this
use does not seem clearly nominative to me†, and he certainly wasn't using the
term "ubuntu" in a generic sense.

† For starters, using the Ubuntu logo as the site's logo seems extremely
superfluous. Do you believe visitors to the site will now have trouble telling
what Ubuntu is since the logo has been removed?

~~~
msh
It is this part i find especially relevant: A nonowner may also use a
trademark nominatively—to refer to the actual trademarked product or its
source. In addition to protecting product criticism and analysis

------
oneeyedpigeon
The fact that Shuttleworth describes fixubuntu.com using the phrase "folks
behind a “sucks” site" demonstrates his entirely dismissive attitude of a very
important issue, here being raised by ONE person, not in a "sucks" style
whatsoever.

~~~
NateDad
That's not the point. He's saying the site is critical of Canonical and
Ubuntu, and he's fine with that. "Sucks site" was just a shorthand.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Come on - 'a "sucks" site' implies one that is wholly, disproportionately,
and/or subjectively critical. fixubuntu.com is none of those things.
Shuttleworth's wording was - I think, intentionally - used to disparage and
discredit it as a source of useful information.

------
Create
☑
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations)#Techni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_\(public_relations\)#Techniques)

------
jarofgreen
So, cheap pop at Debian in an apology? Ummm ...

~~~
jarofgreen
Heh, quite fun watching the score on this go up and down, a controversial
statement? I see @dlgeek has also commented on this.

------
protomyth
'Last week, the less-than-a-month-at-Canonical new guy sent out the toughest
template letter to the folks behind a “sucks” site.'

This is not an excuse and reflects poorly on all management when you throw the
new guy under the bus. The only response to this[1] is "I" not "the new guy".
You are the captain of the ship and don't get to hide behind the new guy.

1) If there is legal consequences and not PR, then you probably shouldn't
state anything about what happened inside and should only speak the absolute
truth or the parts your lawyer let's you.

------
rdsubhas
Just stop reading this shit.

| I made a mistake myself when I used the label “open source tea party” to
refer to the _vocal non-technical critics_ of work that Canonical does

He's still sticking with labelling vocal _technical_ critics as the open
source tea party. Just read it carefully once again.

| That was unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the
real Tea Party (hi there!) and the people with _vocal non-technical criticism_
of work that Canonical does

| Please accept my apologies if you have been a _vocal non-technical critic_
of Canonical’s software and felt offended by the label

Well this _non-apology apology_ completely insults the intelligence of anyone
reading it.

Edit: Formatting

------
senthilnayagam
thanks for the spin mark, lets talk about privacy as well

------
AsymetricCom
Is this a mistake that was addressed or was this a tell of the policies of
Ubuntu? I really doubt that Shuttleworth is going to destroy the trove of
commercially-valuable personal information that is Unity and Zeitgeist.

Clearly, he didn't address anything. He just backtracked. This isn't about the
Ubuntu logo, as much as Shuttleworth wishes it to be.

------
cryptolect
It's cold in hell tonight.

------
general_failure
OK everyone kiss each other. lets get this over

