
Ubuntu Community Manager: RMS's Post Seems a Bit Childish To Me and spreads FUD - cooldeal
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1910228/ubuntu-community-manager-rmss-post-seems-a-bit-childish-to-me
======
EthanHeilman
This is one issue in which RMS is completely right. I don't know why Ubuntu
thinks it can cynically sell it's users searches to amazon but I want nothing
to do with it. Think of the dangers posed by this to human rights activists
who chose linux as the safer OS.

For instance:

1\. Consider a journalist who doing an investigative story on amazon's
warehouse working conditions. The journalist has been given some internal
documents used by amazon and happens to search for one of these documents.
Amazon could detect that someone has this file and learn of the investigation.

2\. Or someone has pirate a movie and searches for the file on their
harddrive. Given certain search strings it should be possible for amazon to
detect that this purpose engages in piracy. What is to prevent amazon from
reporting this information to "The Authorities".

I hope someone develops an Ubuntu fork that doesn't have spyware (spyfree-
ubuntu?).

~~~
mibbitier
FWIW, It's better to stick to the facts rather than spreading even more FUD -
"sell it's users searches to amazon"

Ubuntu is not "selling" your searches to amazon. Ubuntu will only get paid any
money if you click through, and purchase something from Amazon. Ubuntu is
sending your searches to Amazon which may or may not be 'right', but they only
get paid if you buy stuff.

I'd guess Ubuntu are desperate for revenue and have run out of other ideas.

Also FWIW, the number of people who use these desktop search things seems
likely to be tiny. Particularly amongst those who use linux.

Do people here use desktop search on any OS?

~~~
chadwickthebold
I don't understandd how that can be a legitimate mindset for Canonical.

Ubuntu is on the verge of becoming the major player in the early-stage linux
convert market. They have the best supported platform, the largest and most
accepting community and userbase, and are beginning to branch out towards more
traditional markets like gamers with the soon-to-happen inclusion of Steam.

It would seem a better move politically to make this feature either opt-out or
opt-it, and not required.

I've used Ubuntu's dash search when looking for an app that's not readily
available. Who keeps things on the desktop nowadays? :)

------
josephlord
Actual link rather than to Slashdot discussion:

[http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/07/on-richard-stallman-
and-...](http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/07/on-richard-stallman-and-ubuntu/)

The problem for me is that isn't addressed by this is the decision to make it
default on in Ubuntu. That failure of judgement* means that I can't trust them
not to change something else that I have to notice and find out how to easily
disable. Easy to turn off is not good enough for such a feature.

Edit to add: Basically I think RMS is right about this one (as he often is)
although in many cases I make compromises that he would find wholly
unacceptable.

* It might be ethics but I would give Canonical the benefit of the doubt on that one.

~~~
yungchin
I think I've written this before, but: this feature would go nowhere if it was
disabled by default. If you want to know whether mainstream users will or will
not like it, you can't stick it in some obscure alpha (they'll never test it),
and you can't make it optional (only a few percent will ever come across the
tick box at all).

So yeah, I don't like this feature either (for all the reasons RMS pointed
out), but I don't see how otherwise they could have tested it. Maybe not a
failure of judgement then, but rather choosing innovation over privacy?

(Note the 12.10 betas also had all these queries going over the network in
plain text... so I kind of see the whole experiment as taking the "move fast
and break things" mantra taken to the extreme)

~~~
josephlord
Opt in doesn't necessarily mean hidden in settings. For this feature it
probably should be a pop up that appears the first time each user enters a
search request before it gets sent over the network.

The question could have a positive spin "Would you like to see network
enhanced search results?" with details and privacy policy links. Options of
"Yes", "Ask later" and "Disable enhanced search". They could even put an "Are
you sure?" If disable is selected.

~~~
yungchin
This seems bizarre in retrospect, but somehow none of the above had occurred
to me before. Thanks for taking the time to type it and enlighten.

------
danieldk
The post speaks of facts and then states:

 _The goal of the dash in Ubuntu has always been to provide a central place in
which you can search and find things that are interesting and relavent to you;
it is designed to be at the center of your computing experience._

So, did they conduct a survey to check that majority of Ubuntu users thinks
that getting Amazon affiliate links is 'interesting and relevant'?

I'd wager that a majority dislikes the integration of Amazon affiliate links.
If so, Jono, is not providing factual information either.

Of course, we all know ulterior motive is generating more income. Then, at
least be honest (or silent) about it.

[1] Yes, I know, you can use Super+a, but most users will just click the Dash
or press the Super key. It's the most obvious thing to do.

~~~
ealexhudson
It's difficult to see where the "uncertainty" or "doubt" that RMS is alleged
to be spreading is: as far as I can tell, both he and Jono agree on the facts,
they just disagree on the fear. Accusing RMS of spreading FUD seems a tad
alarmist.

It is interesting to examine the claim that the Amazon search should be
included because it would provide interesting and relevant things - unlike
something like Google, Amazon's search engine has a single goal in life, to
sell things. Whether users like the integration or not, even the more
fundamental question seems to want answering: I cannot think of a time when
I've been searching for stuff, locally or online, and thought, "You know what,
I wish Amazon results were integrated into this - that'd be great!".

~~~
jeremyjh
> unlike something like Google

Please tell me you are joking. Google exists only to sell your eyeballs and
whatever it can figure out about you.

~~~
shardling
_FFS_ , you know damn well what the post meant. Your comment adds nothing to
the discussion.

~~~
jeremyjh
I'm not at all sure that I do know. I believe part of the implied message in
this post is that Google is not motivated by a cynical profit motive to the
same extent that Amazon is. That is highly dubious to me. Sending search
queries to Google may very well be both more useful and less surprising to end
users, but it is NOT "less evil". Either and both would be significant privacy
violations.

I am now not sure that is implied by the message at all. In which case you
would be mistaken about me knowing damn well what it meant. I have no idea
what other interpretation of the Google reference would make sense.

Either way, your hostility is unwarranted and adds nothing to the discussion.

~~~
ealexhudson
No, that wasn't the point I was making at all.

Google, as a search engine, is a generic "find the most relevant thing based
on the keywords I provide". Amazon, as a search engine, is closer to "find the
things I would be most likely to buy based on the keywords I provide". The two
functions are entirely different.

I didn't make any comment about it being "less evil" (was that intended to be
a quote?); I was making a comment about the intended function of the service.
I could have substituted in DDG or Yahoo! or Bing and the point would be the
same; equally, it makes as much sense to provide Amazon-based results to me as
it would do to provide results from Target or Walmart.

~~~
jeremyjh
No, of course you didn't say anything about it being less evil; but that is
what Richard Stallman is talking about. So your position is that this is a
usability issue with the "feature"? Your comment is baffling to me now.

------
leephillips
Jono Bacon's little essay convinces me that RMS is right, and I plan to wean
myself from Ubuntu and find another distribution to install on my laptops --
and I will cease my practice of recommending Ubuntu to people starting out
with linux.

This is entirely because Bacon's reply to RMS fails to address his criticisms.
He ignores RMS's specific points, instead going on about how great Ubuntu is,
delving into RMS's character and personality, and attacking straw men, mainly
the notion that the problem arises from Ubuntu's policies not being precisely
in alignment with RMS's preferences.

All of this convinces me that Canonical has no answer to RMS's challenge, and
that they have indeed become purveyors of spyware; in addition, that it is
likely to become gradually more abusive with time, so better to get out now.

------
h2s

        > These statements simply generate fear, uncertainty,
        > and doubt about Ubuntu;
    
        > This just seems a bit childish to me.
    

I once read an article that said you should be very careful of anybody who can
disagree vehemently and convincingly with another person's point without ever
categorically accusing them of being _wrong_.

I think it applies here, because RMS is right about this one.

~~~
handelaar

      > "I once read an article that said you should be very careful of
      > anybody who can disagree vehemently and convincingly with another
      > person's point without ever categorically accusing them of being 
      > wrong."
    

In fact you should seek out such people, because in matters of opinion that is
the _exact definition_ of someone with whom you can have a civilised
discussion.

~~~
h2s
Good point. In fact, Jono says this:

    
    
        > With this in mind, just because someone may have differing
        > views to mine on the implementation of privacy in software 
        > doesn’t mean they are wrong. Likewise, just because my 
        > views may differ to theirs doesn’t mean I am wrong. We are 
        > all different and we all manage our information and our 
        > expectations around information sharing in different ways.
    

I kind of regret the way I said what I said above now, but I still think Jono
has failed to address my privacy concerns. From the point of view of somebody
who _is_ worried about the privacy implications of the Amazon integration, all
the post really does is to say "Well I'm not worried". It does say it in quite
a reasonable and comforting way though.

------
glogla
_> In his reply, Jono claims that Stallman's views on privacy do not align
with Canonical's_

That's pretty obvious. The question is every user needs to ask himself is
precisely this one, "do my views on my privacy align with Canonical?"

------
nicholassmith
Ubuntu should have just kept quiet (even if the post does not necessarily
represent the views of Ubuntu, Canonical or any others involved in this
project, forever more, IDST; he still is a public presence for it), and let it
burn itself out. It wouldn't have gone away, not completely, but they've made
the issue bigger now.

RMS says things, that's what he does. He's committed to a very specific path
in life and that's okay. Ubuntu as a project needs to have a revenue stream to
survive, and from what I've read Canonical makes some reasonably decent money
from private enterprise and so on, so they probably don't need the revenue
stream all that bad.

I personally have no issues with the idea of affiliate links being embedded,
it actually sounds like a nice idea to hack into Alfred so when I want a movie
it'll check Amazon/iTunes/so on for it, but it needs to be made clear.

For those concerned about this being a HUGE security breach, have you audited
the source? It's available online. Does it confirm your suspicions that Amazon
is tracking _everything_ search? The code is there, so if it's acting as
spyware it's hardly the most secretive way of doing it.

~~~
wnight
How can auditing one copy of a program prove what Amazon chooses to record
with another copy?

>RMS says things, that's what he does.

I see. And probably without a license... Tisk, tisk.

~~~
nicholassmith
Well, auditing it would show what data is being sent where, and when. Unless
of course we assume that the source published for th global search lens is in
some way not what's being shipped. That'd be a whole other kettle o fish.

~~~
wnight
I think it's pretty obvious what it sends - or rather, the obvious stuff is
enough to bother some people when the feature defaults to on.

They're saying they'd search for "Joe Random - Resignation Letter -
FooCorp.doc" trying to find the latest copy they'd written and when that was
sent to Amazon as a product search it would leak private information.

~~~
nicholassmith
So I take it you've reviewed the source? Sat and watched a packet stream? The
thing is I've heard lots of complaints about it infringing privacy, but not
from someone who's also reviewed the source, it's all just second hand
information.

~~~
wnight
Did you read my post? Even the basic text it sends is enough to be a concern
for some.

Are you saying you doubt it does this?

------
klearvue
Dear Jono,

It may very well be that RMS's comments were over the top but please check the
numbers on DistroWatch - those numbers will testify that Canonical is not
making the right decisions, at least not on the desktop, and RMS's sentiments
are quite likely shared by plenty of your former users.

~~~
yock
And to some extent I would think Canonical is okay with that. A cull of their
core users expecting an unencumbered free tool is probably in their best
interests. People who are willing to trade something of monetary value
arguably should be the focus of any business.

Also, don't leave here thinking that DistroWatch is a good metric of mindshare
among Linux users...

 _"The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics...show the number of times a
distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."_

<http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity>

~~~
Zigurd
There is a problem with "A cull of core users"

Before this point, Canonical sold support as their approach to monetizing
their investment in creating a distribution. Data collection, applying
analytic, and selling user data is incompatible with both the free-to-use
Ubuntu community, and the enterprise customers.

Canonical has fundamentally changed what the Ubuntu brand means, and that is
reflected in people finding that good alternatives exist.

~~~
yock
In other words then, Canonical has modified their business plans with respect
to Ubuntu, probably because the previous revenue model didn't work. What makes
these so-called "alternatives" so much more viable? How will they succeed
where Canonical failed?

------
chris_wot
This, unfortunately, is a common GNOME-like mentality. Our users aren't right,
we are. We don't need to listen to strong criticism, because we are making
_awesome_ things.

Seriously, some of these guys live in a bubble.

~~~
yarrel
GNOME isn't Ubuntu.

~~~
chris_wot
No, but Jono Bacon was extremely entwined in GNOME for a long time.

~~~
bratsche
I had never heard of Jono until he was working for Canonical.

~~~
chris_wot
That doesn't negate my point in any way.

~~~
bratsche
Well, I'm a former GNOME and GTK+ developer and a former Canonical/Ubuntu
developer and I had never noticed him being involved in GNOME outside his
Canonical duties.

Of course you could still be right about him being entwined in GNOME though,
but I don't think you are.

~~~
chris_wot
He was a regular on Planet Gnome, and was quite involved in Guadec. Why don't
you ask him?

~~~
bratsche
I'm not sure what there is to ask. I was mostly commenting on how you worded
that, I suppose. It kind of read as though you think Jono was, for a time,
deeply involved in Gnome or something, and I can't think of any way that he's
really contributed to Gnome except to voice his opinion on things people are
doing. I don't think being on Planet Gnome and going to Guadec is a good
measurement of how entwined someone is in Gnome. Mark was on Planet Gnome for
awhile too, and he goes to Guadec usually. The first time I met him was at
Boston Summit. I never would have considered Mark deeply entwined in Gnome
though, and I don't think most people would.

Then again, I'm not really involved in Gnome anymore either. So maybe I'm
totally wrong and he's doing all kinds of stuff for Gnome now and I just don't
pay attention anymore. But my experience working at Canonical was that it's
more difficult, not easier, to stay involved in upstream projects.

------
digitalengineer
Great reply in the comments from Ubuntu users here:
[http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/07/on-richard-stallman-
and-...](http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/07/on-richard-stallman-and-ubuntu/)

~~~
tucosan
you just posted a link to the story itself. check your url...

------
Puer
I've been a Ubuntu fanboy for years. When my old desktop running XP completely
failed, my older brother installed Ubuntu on it and I fell in love with it.

A few months ago I did a clean install of Ubuntu 12.04 on my netbook that had
previously been running Windows 7. Unity didn't bother me. What bothered me
was how much unnecessary software was installed. I felt like I had no control.
After only a few weeks of using Ubuntu I decided to install Arch Linux for the
first time. I haven't looked back since.

I think people underestimate just how good it feels to be in complete and
utter control of your system. I know exactly what is installed on my system,
how to fix it if something goes wrong and exactly what I'm getting myself into
when I upgrade. I felt like I had that power back when I was running Ubuntu
8.04, but I was slowly losing it with each new release, and that's why I
stopped using Ubuntu.

------
deeqkah
We're all capable of configuring our chosen distro in such a way that it's
comfortable for us to use. We're all also capable of applying our values when
choosing that actual distro (in the same way that Richard Stalman does).

Having said that, and i don't mean to insult anyone here, but why are we
actually going to go _directly_ into the meta of discussing other people's
opinions here?

Why is this discussion relevant _here_ on Hacker News? I don't see this as
thought provoking, rather i see it as an open invitation for everyone to
contribute to a perverted gossip column.

Resistance to this design decision by Canonical should have been intense when
it was announced, and not when someone with an audience decided to state their
opinion.

Again, this is in no way meant to insult anyone currently involved in talking
about this. As much as everyone here has the opportunity to state why they
support either side of the issue, it's also important to make opinions on it's
context.

~~~
tjr
_Resistance to this design decision by Canonical should have been intense when
it was announced, and not when someone with an audience decided to state their
opinion._

It probably should have been. I don't use Ubuntu, and I had never heard of the
issue at all until Richard's article. Knowing about the issue doesn't have an
immediate practical impact on me, but I will likely make it a point to avoid
Ubuntu in the future.

~~~
klez
Actually multiple venues talked (sometimes critically) about this problem,
Mark Shuttleworth made a blog post about it, criticizing the critics. So it's
really nothing new.

------
doe88
I love when a post starts or ends with "This is a personal post and does not
neccessarily represent the views of XXX".

I know even before reading it that their post will be in the interest of their
employer 99% of the time. I'm not against it sometimes there are insightful
posts but there are also not very objective by definition.

------
dasil003
It's funny how the acronym FUD has such an extremely negative connotation that
the entire discussion is _whether_ something is FUD or not rather than asking
if there is any legitimacy to the FUD.

I mean let's be honest here: FUD is RMS's bread and butter. But just because
FUD is his tactic doesn't mean he doesn't have legitimate concerns. Certainly
he's operating at a much more realistic level than the Microsoft marketing FUD
of decades past that was so completely full of bullshit that it deserved
little more than acronymical dismissal. I'm sure it's pretty galling to be on
the receiving end of one of RMS's absolutist rants, but no matter how over the
top or strongly worded they are, they can't be made to go away with a sober
appeal to level-headed moderation. Regardless of the words we choose,
Canonical's actions are cause for concern.

------
chj
This time I completely sided with RMS. Sorry, It is not Childish.

------
meaty
Well that seals it. We had the same crap from shuttleworth.

Don't piss of your customers canonical. Unlike windows, there are plenty of
compatible alternatives.

------
segmond
how do you disable it, that's the question.

