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Ubuntu's New Firefox Is Watching You
sukotto writes "Ubuntu recently released an unannounced and experimental 'multisearch' extension to Firefox alpha 3, apparently in an effort to improve the default behavior of new tabs and of search. In a response to one of the initial bug reports the maintainers mentioned that the extension's other purposes were 'collecting the usage data' and 'generating revenue.' Since this extension installs by itself and offers no warning about potential privacy violations, quite a few people (myself included) feel pretty unhappy. The only way to opt out is to disable the extension manually via Tools > Add-ons." Most posters to this Ubuntu forum thread are not happy about multisearch.
This is not actually far away from how Firefox generates its revenue too - from ad clicks in Google search and by direct sponsoring from Google.
The two main ways to monetarize and support OSS projects is giving support and ads. In the later case you always lose some of your privacy. Developing Linux and its distro's need money aswell. You could choose a distro that is financed in other way (maybe by you), use commercial software that doesn't do this or be fine with generating some ad income to support the development. "Perfect" package is usually impossible to obtain because of financial limitations.
Google is build completely around this model too and it seems to work good for them - even if people lose some of their privacy. Hell, slashdot is maintained by ad revenue too. Another distro that also does same kind of stuff is Linux Mint.
Its nothing new, but it might surprise those who believe in pure, not-revenue-generating OSS. It's how the free for user projects are financed.
There's no point denying it: Big projects need funding. Funding creates dependencies. Since there is no way around the need for funding, it is of utmost importance that dependencies and privacy implications are disclosed. So Ubuntu: FAIL.
Well, here's the outrage from when Microsoft slipped the .NET Framework Assistant into Firefox without asking. Adjust your outrage accordingly...
Most people are under the impression that Ubuntu is a free OS, not an Ad Sponsored/Data mining revenue oriented OS.
Canonical is Free to distribute a computer program that watches how people use it as long as people who use the program know what's going on. But because Firefox/Iceweasel/whatever is free software, you are also Free to download the source code, rip out the data mining, and rebuild it, or to hire someone to do so for you.
The multisearch add-on was only intended for the pre-release versions, as part of a research project. It is very unlikely that it will be included in the final Karmic release in the same form as its current incarnation.
There, fixed that for me.
My point was, anyway, that the Ubuntu devs didn't intend to make this Multisearch a part of Firefox as we know it. Some of the same concepts, maybe, but they will assuredly be more fleshed out, more intuitive, than in the Alphas. And next time, maybe they'll tell us first?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I don't think anyone begrudges Ubuntu taking advantage of a perfectly acceptable revenue model. That's not the problem here.
The problem is that Ubuntu is shipping a modified version of Firefox instead of the default Firefox shipped by Mozilla. Sure, both Ubuntu and Debian ship patched versions of just about every package they include in the repository. But the overwhelming majority of those patches don't noticeably effect the user experience.
Firefox, on the other hand, is pretty much the #1 most important part of the user experience in Ubuntu. It's the application most people are going to use more than anything else. In fact, after Ubuntu is installed, the user will probably spend more time interacting with Firefox than with all the rest of Ubuntu combined. It's not inaccurate to say it's a Firefox machine, as opposed to an Ubuntu or Linux machine.
Since Firefox is the most important part of the user experience, the users don't want Firefox changed in any way. They want the default Firefox as shipped by Mozilla. They don't want the named changed to Shiretoko or IceWeasel. They don't want the icons changed. They don't want weird extensions that change behaviour. They also don't want updates to come from Ubuntu repositories, as they do for every other package. They want the newest version of Firefox from Mozilla at the exact moment that Mozilla ships it.
I understand the reasoning behind Ubuntu and Debians policies, but I think it is obvious that Firefox trumps Ubuntu. They should make a special exception for it. Just ship the raw Firefox as released by Mozilla. Don't modify it in any way whatsoever. The world is just getting more browser centric. The operating system is just the code that talks between the browser and the hardware. You can do anything you want to the OS, but don't touch the browser or you'll lose all the users you worked so hard to gain.
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