Slashdot Mirror
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.
I hear the Ubuntu extension also has a feature for euthanasia of old people.
I've been following this for some time. The multisearch add-on was only intended for the pre-release versions, as part of a research project. It will NOT be included in the final Karmic release.
That is what alpha releases are for, after all: testing. Admittedly, the devs could have bothered to mention that they were planning this, but it's better that they did it here than in the final release.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I installed Linux Mint about a month ago looking for a new Linux distribution to put on a cheap laptop I had just gotten. All the search pages, no matter where I searched, were coming up branded "Linux Mint". Didn't take too long for me to get annoyed at this, especially when I found out there was no way whatsoever to remove the addon from Firefox. I ended up downloading the mozilla.com distributed package and overwriting the symlinks by hand. Mint is based on Ubuntu, but my 9.04 installs don't have this in there. I guess this is one "innovation" that made it back up the food chain. Personally embarassing for me, since I had just finished recommending Linux Mint to several friends, aquaintances, and customers.
0. Once prerequisites are installed on Ubuntu,
1. Download the source:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.5.2/source/firefox-3.5.2-source.tar.bz2
2. Unpack source:
tar xvfj firefox-3.5.2-source.tar.bz2
3. Create .mozconfig in the top-level directory:
. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/objdir-ff-release
mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j4"
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
export CFLAGS="-gstabs+"
export CXXFLAGS="-gstabs+"
4. make -f client.mk
5. Enjoy objdir-ff-release/dist/bin/firefox
Epiphany is available in Ubuntu -- it also looks a hell of a lot nicer with GNOME than FF does. Give it a try.
--saint
Collecting user data without asking for agreement is wrong, whatever you say.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
as soon as Linux gained enough popularity that spyware and spyware like activities would start creeping in, glad i learned Linux early, fortunately i dont use ubuntu, and i wonder how long until this is embedded in to firefox itself and not removable, i am using an unofficial build of firefox (Shiretoko-3.5.2) and for all i know it may already have it, if it does i hope word gets out and it bites mozilla.com on the ass. it might even be prudent to just remove the damn thing and use lynx or links instead. maybe even just abandon Linux completely and switch to one of the [Free/net/open]BSDs not sure i could trust PCBSD to not pull the same crap canonical/ubuntu is doing...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
it was introduced in Karmic which is an alpha distribution. It wasn't introduced without announcement to the main production users of Jaunty. It may have been introduced without announcement to the Karmic alpha, because introducing it to the alpha *is* the announcement. It was done to see if it was better, results from alpha testing may reveal it is not better, or may reveal it is better. The results of the experiment will help decide whether it should stay, or go.
Ok, I guess is time to start looking at alternatives. Not saying I will switch but I better keep options open.
Any user-friendly, easy to install linux distribution like Ubuntu around? (Fedora need not to apply, btw)
Preferably one without that pulseaudio crap installed by default...
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
Quoting from the linked bug report:
"We've made some changes in the Alpha 3 version of Firefox related to how and where search queries are processed. We've introduced the changes at this time in an experimental vein in order to explore and understand the user experience and usage patterns. We plan to use this experimental code at least until Alpha 4.
Note that we did not necessarily foresee Multisearch as code that we would ship in a stable release. Whatever actions we take in response to the information and feedback will depend on the information and feedback that we collect from this effort."
This is a test feature directed at exploring ways of improving user experience, nobody is spying on anyone. Maybe there should have been a better P.R.strategy, like communicating this experiment on advance, and requesting feedback. That would avoid some moron misinterpreting the whole thing. Now can we all go back to doing useful stuff?
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.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The FIRST thing I did was to look at my Firefox to see if I had this search function. Nada. I opened up Synaptic to see if it were available. Nope.
So, I checked out the links offered in the article.
WHOOO-HOOO!!
We are talking about an ALPHA thingamabob. Alpha. Test stuff. Meaning that, the people who have the addon VOLUNTEERED to install and TEST the thing.
TFA is a little bit of grandstanding by a drama llama. This addon is going to be tested, the community will determine if it's useful, and whether it should be modified. Unless you CHOOSE to VOLUNTEER to use this thing, you won't even see it for some time come. At which point in time, you will have a CHOICE as to whether to install it.
FUD me!! I spent 5 minutes of my remaining life looking at a total non-issue.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
... is people not really paying attention to the facts.
* This has been repeatedly stated to be an experiment in an alpha (i.e. testing only) release
* Revenue gathering from the choice of search engine is nothing new (it's the main way Firefox generates revenue for Mozilla Corp)
* The data gathered is which of the search boxes you use (the default firefox UI lets you search from the search bar, in the URL bar and the default homepage).
So basically this seems to be an experiment to figure out which of the search methods people are using most.
(disclaimer: I work for Canonical as a sysadmin. I'm not a developer and I don't work on Ubuntu directly, so I was not in any way involved in the planning/implementation of this, and I speak here only for myself as an Ubuntu user who's dismayed at the anger people are unbottling with little information)
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
I alternate between Windows XP and Kubuntu Jaunty with a shared Firefox profile on an NTFS drive, and 90% of the time all I see is minor changes in the task bar underneath Firefox.
(The other 10% I enjoy a better console and alternate between loving and hating Linux packaging.)
=S
The level of skill it implies, the time and the money, is out of reach of any ordinary user.
This would be an extraordinarily hard sentiment to formally define. How far back in history does one need to go to say the same about literacy? How far would one need to travel in the present world? Long before your definition reaches bedrock, it all becomes relative to a social construct.
Two of the great innovations of our number system (positional representation, and the digit zero) were incredible aids to making numeracy less "out of reach" for ever larger segments of the population.
The upward swing of the innovation cycle is making the dog walk in the first place, however badly. If the technology becomes pervasive, this is followed by the outward swing, making the technology ordinary. This point was also neglected by the post who suggested that open source needs to be better than closed source to overcome the adoption hurdle. But that only applies in the boost phase of the innovation cycle, not to ball point pens.
The desktop OS is halfway through the commoditization cycle already. For a broad audience, the browser already matters more. Decisions are increasingly driven not by what is best, but by what is most hassle free. Cost is not driving the bus. There are some pieces of software offered with no monetary cost I won't install because the software doesn't do enough for me to justify reading the license agreement, and the organization hasn't maintained a reputation where I'm willing to install the software on trust. (Ubuntu seems to be actively scouting the boundary with this latest move.)
Speaking of licenses, IANAL => literacy ain't worth much. The governing rules of society are out of reach to those governed. So that's what "out of reach" gets you as a debating tactic: absolutely nothing. Out of reach is not merely taken for granted, it's a governing principle.
The hassle factor is asserting control over the behaviour of our installed software has less to do with the learning the C language and more to do with byproducts of the software engineering life cycle. We're at the point in the innovation cycle where invention of the digit zero would be incredibly welcome.
The problem is that our software has an emotional IQ which in the animal kingdom would be dead square in the quadrant "too dumb to live".
A mother bear gets a bit testy about the space between herself and her bear cubs. I get a mite testy about a software installer shuffling around a system configuration that was carefully tweaked. To cite the most extreme example, I once lost nearly a month in a software development process because some stupid Microsoft JET accessory (don't ask) swapped a defective DLL in place of a DLL I had carefully chosen to be compatible with some other quirky POS (thanks, Microsoft).
In the animal kingdom, you take one look at momma bear, then you consider your survival odds if she gets testy about your next foot step. This the emotional IQ our software needs to develop. This is difficult at the present moment, because my software is blind: it doesn't know who the fuck I am. It doesn't know I have "bad mother fucker" tattooed on my wallet. (Note to the Sun Java installer: the next time you install the Yahoo toolbar because I forget to click off the Yahoo button--after clicking it off 13 out of 15 times already--I'm going to rip out your giblets and engage in a pagan ritual.)
This blindness is a byproduct of an inferior technology: our software engineering and release life cycle. As software engineers, we haven't yet figured out how to function effectively in a world where _every_ end user software install takes into account a personality profile of the software victim.
Testiness factors
1. maybe it's cool ... ...
2. what the heck is a DLL and why should I care?
5. don't mess with it if I don't understand it
10. mother bear
11. Godzilla
Having lived through
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion