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Ubuntu Community Manager: RMS's Post Seems a Bit Childish To Me
spacenet writes "As a response to RMS speaking out against Ubuntu about its privacy-violating integrated Amazon search results, which he considers to be spyware, Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon has addressed RMS's statements. In his reply, Jono claims that Stallman's views on privacy do not align with Canonical's, that some of his statements are worded in order to 'generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Ubuntu' and that 'it just seems a bit childish to me.' The comments on the post itself are well worth a read."
I think we can agree that RMS can be childish. I was in the room when he broke into the room yelling at OSCON's Openoffice announcement. That's the way he is.
Even though I don't and never will agree with him 100% (that's worship) I am happy he's there, especially when there are thousands of people on the other side in IT yelling through coporate bullhorns constantly. His big mouth is a counterweight. If the braindead microsoft zombies that control IT in corporate america have heard of anyone's views it is probably his. I am not sure if Ubuntu is trying to become yet another Open Source company that is canibalized and eaten from inside by today's vile corporate belief system, but at least RMS let us know it COULD happen...
Now I'm being managed.... What another good linux distro? Anyone?
Richard is an academic. He doesn't live in the real world and it doesn't help that he is probably a little looney. That said, he can be right on a lot of points and even if he's wrong if he opens up a discussion then you can still say he's done his bit.
Busted by RMS for adding spyware to Linux, which is not in doubt. Cue the defiant spin. Bad strategy. Ubuntu guys should talk less about their Apple envy and more about doing the right thing.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
When you say "just look at facebook" for a comparison of your privacy policies... you kinda prove RMS's point.
That which is not dead may eternal lie,and in strange aeons even death may die
A post such as above reinfrorces every opinion I hold of Microsoft, its tactics, and its camp followers.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Doesn't Amazon pay Canonical if people make purchases? (I might be wrong about this -- if I am, please correct me.)
*If* Amazon does pay Canonical, and Bacon doesn't mention that in his post, I kind of feel like Bacon loses the argument. I mean, if they're getting paid, and he's making posts that say, "We're doing this only because we want you to have the best search experience," it seems a little disingenuous.
Now I'm being managed.... What another good linux distro? Anyone?
It is so trivial to disable (and remove) this "feature" that bitching about it is almost meaningless and indeed borderlines on childishness.
In reality, it is not much different that an ad-supported application (such as Opera had at one time), except with those, you didn't have the freedom to permanently remove the ad without paying up - which is not the case here.
And of course, no one is forcing anyone to download and install Ubuntu, unless of course you are interested in a fairly easy to install distro that works out of the box with most modern equipment - which is a great thing for the less technically savvy.
In short, this is a non-issue and RMS is (as expected) over-reacting to something that doesn't fit into his perfect Socialist software society.
RMS is a great man, but like many great men, sometimes he's a raving lunatic.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Ad-hominem. Your entire post is invalid.
"If you can't get the message get the man" - Mel Gibson from an interview
I like how, in the previous RMS post to Slashdot, people were attacking him, even pointing out some disgusting behavior in the first few posts. It makes me wonder how many shill accounts exist just for this purpose, for Linux and FOSS articles a lot of the time sock puppets are the first to post and are usually OT and/or trolls.
The message is what matters, and in this matter I support what RMS has said.
Most people of high intelligence are also a bit eccentric somewhere in their lives. It's when they're very smart but poor we call them crazy.
âoeThe worst thing you can call someone is crazy, itâ(TM)s dismissive.â
- Dave Chappelle from inside the actors studio
Calling RMS crazy is a little bit like calling Hawking disgusting because he isn't sexually attractive to most and lacks something because of the way he delivers his speeches.
More and more people are driven today to admire the rich, pretty looking, but stupid vs. the eccentric ones with the wisdom and intelligence. It's like high school all over again.
IMO, Ubuntu is headed in the wrong direction. While they had or have money from Shuttleworth and/or others, they should buy up some companies selling proprietary software and liberate it by making it FOSS, in areas where Linux is weak, one example of something lacking is a good video editor, and I've tried them all, they all feel like shit and some crash often. There are many other proprietary programs of different function(s) which they could benefit from by buying and liberating. But instead they've gone the way of Unity and now this so-called spyware issue.
Thankfully Distrowatch points us to many other choices, Mint being one of them, for those of us who have had enough of these changes in Ubuntu while feeling the developers, or those who micro manage them are out of touch.
So goodbye, Ubuntu. I'll miss you. Maybe we'll see another rich individual put their money behind a distro and launch some real advertising in the media to awaken the sleeping Windows users.
OT:
U.N. report reveals secret law enforcement techniques
"Point 201: Mentions a new covert communications technique using software defined high frequency radio receivers routed through the computer creating no logs, using no central server and extremely difficult for law enforcement to intercept."
http://www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Use_of_Internet_for_Terrorist_Purposes.pdf
http://www.hacker10.com/other-computing/u-n-report-reveals-secret-law-enforcement-techniques/
Hmmm, I don't know if you've met many Jonathans but some abbreviate their name Jon, others Jono because it's less confusing than having people think your name is 'John'.
No different than being named Steve, Bob, Jim, Dave, Pete etc.
Is RMS wrong? It doesn't sound like it. I don't care if he's childish.
Both can be annoying and counter-productive when pushed to extremes. Yet, it's not necessarily bad to have them in the world.
It's not that I would expect anything else from someone who is a "community manager" (FOSS' modern-day equivalent to the appendix, in my opinion), but this "personal blog entry" is, of course, a steaming turd. I don't see RMS spreading FUD about Ubuntu, not at all. In fact, he makes it quite clear what they get, in his opinion at least, wrong, and why he sees it that way - and he leaves nothing about that "in doubt" or, in one way or anther, vague. Discrediting this kind of honest and up-front criticism as FUD, whilst he himself is weasling around the true motives (turn desktop users into dollar bills for Canonical's pockets) for the Amazon integration with all that hey-everybody-let's-disregard-that-and-feel-good sidetracking that's going on in that posting really makes me nauseous. "Better user experience", "creating desirable products", yaddah yaddah - yeah, fine and dandy, but trying to sell us this (in my opionion pretty crazy) add-on, that submits all the text I enter - be it to start a new program or open a document I stored - to a web service the users absolutely don't control, as an improvement for the good of the general public is not only ridiculous, but also demeaning to the intelligence of everyone who they expect to fall for the kind of "argument" Jono Bacon is trying to make on his blog. It's the FOSS-equivalent to the Ask.com toolbar, or Bonzy Buddy "form filling" browser-add on from days of yore, that Windows users get shoved down their collective throats if they miss unchecking a box in popular "freeware" installation wizards these days, and everyone with half a brain can see right through that.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
First they totally ignore user wishes by foisting Unity on previously happy Ubuntu users, with a "for your own good" attitude. Thank goodness there is Linux Mint is all I can say about the desktop nonsense.
Now Ubuntu are integrating privacy-destroying searches. Then they have the temerity to criticize the guy who inspired the ecosystem they depend on (and profit from), when he points out that what is good for Canonical is not good for the privacy of their users.
What a tragedy. Ubuntu's focus on ease of use was such a great leap forward for Linux usability. Now they've lost the plot and forgot about their constituency, instead trying to drive more and more revenue with things the user's don't actually want.
It used to be, "In order for Microsoft to 'win', the customer must lose". You could extend that to "In order for Canonical to win, the customer must lose". You could then generalize that (as RMS does) to "In order for $COMPANY to win, the customer must lose". There are still some companies around that actually care about their employees and users (not just paying lip service to it), but that number is clearly decreasing. RMS is right to call them out for ignoring user desire for privacy (privacy should be the default, with effort to opt-in).
Jono has what seems a reasonable post. He never addresses RMS' assertion not that searches go to Amazon, but that your files and folders that are also searched also have metadata submitted to Canonical (and then presumably, portions go to Amazon). Jono never dismisses this citing stuff about "personal preference" instead. It would be nice if Canonical came out with a statement saying that they don't transfer information from your searched files and folders to Amazon, because they haven't yet (at least not in my reading of Jono's post). Until Canonical prove otherwise it appear that RMS is completely right in this issue.
The truth is Ubuntu will not continue to exist unless they can make money. This isn't the first strategy they've tried.
As much as I despise the "feature," I'd rather have to disable some settings when I install than to not have Ubuntu (and its derivatives.)
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
That pointed out that the emperor had no clothes?
"Bertrand Russell was so inept, physically, that he could never learn to make a pot of tea."
"Immanuel Kant could not manage to sharpen a quill pen with a penknife."
"John Stuart Mill could barely tie a simple knot."
Who cares? They are not fameous for that.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
It's famous, idoit!
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
No, I'm not.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Well i would far rather have the RMS version .. The Ubuntu people need to quit with the Apple /MS tactics
Like you I too like (liked?) Ubuntu but I'm not going to be moving on from 12.04 due to the disagreeable features being add. Yes they can currently apparently be turned off but I don't want to be messing like that. Question is where to move to.
When you grow up and realize what the real world is like, you'll quickly realize that information can in fact be owned, and that it's important for this to occur for numerous reasons which you apparently fail to grasp. No amount of pseudo-techno-philosophy you choose to fill your head with will change how the world works, nor will it stop you from going to jail if you suddenly decide something belongs to you which doesn't.
Thinking you're more enlightened than the rest of society despite an overwhelming majority of them disagreeing with you is usually the first sign of a delusional mind. It's common in those who feel they should be able to have what other people possess, as a matter of fact.
Ubuntu is ultimately there for Canonical's profit. We thought we could work with folks like that, but obviously we were too optimistic. The goals of the Free Software community are important, and will only be achieved if people like you devote your free time to making the non-profits work as the direct path to users.
Bruce Perens.
The manager doesn't have a good reply or defense so lets just call RMS names.
These days, he simply revises the GPL whenever a company (like Tivo) sends him into one of his rages.
Considering that there's only been three versions, and version one basically never saw the light of day, and version two was considered The GPL for over a quarter of a century, I think you're more than exaggerating. In fact, I think you're trolling.
Or maybe you're right, and RMS has only had one rage in the last thirty years--but then why say "one of his rages"?
Basically, your post seems to be logic-free. But hey, at least we don't have to worry about you revising any of your major contributions to the world every time you fly into one of your little rages. That would require that you make at least one.
thats easy - move to mint
i did so when they introduced unity and never regretted it
Yes you are, back in the cart
You might consider Trisquel...it is FSF endorsed as a distribution that meets its guidelines: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html Trisquel is akin to a Ubuntu with the non-free elements removed so it shouldn't be too much of a culture shock for you should you opt to use it. Further distributions with FSF approval are on the following link as is the link to obtain Trisquel: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
You mean like Gobuntu or gNewSense? The versions of Ubuntu that only contain free software? The ones that if you install on a laptop you have a 75% chance of not having wi-fi?
RMS's demands end up being unworkable. Although he's had a pretty good track record for being right, any "free software only" distro ends up being limiting.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
No, RMS has a valid complaint.
The concept of being more useful to the consumer is fine. After all, we ALL buy things online. Most of us use the computer for ecommerce of some sort. a feature that makes it easier would be useful.
However, its not the what, but the how which make this pretty dangerous to your freedoms:
1. The user doesn't have a choice of the backend. They don't have the right to select the online purchase service of choice. This is going to make the Ubuntu experiance as one giant advertisement to get you to buy partner related shit-you-don't-need.
2. Targeted ads, at the operating system level. While targeted ads are good, as they reduced the obnoxious system destroying ads of 10 years ago, they do so by spying on the users habit, and compiling dossiers on users. These profiles are then bought and sold on the open market. They are the biggest gross violation of privacy that perhaps exists today.
At least a few specialize in identifying complainers, and critics(silencing them?), to companies.
Having this at the OS level, would make Ubuntu 13.04 potentially worse than MS Windows on the default install for privacy. This is certainly an entire OPERATING SYSTEM on par with the shovelware(removable) that comes with windows.
Instead of selling you an operating system, or selling you service and support on an opperating system. Ubuntu is now selling YOU to the advertising/PR Companies, and through them, anyone else who has the money to pay.
On the bright side, there are more GNU/Linux distro choices, and it should be easy to remove the spyware via apt.
http://linuxmint.com
Most posts like that are explicitly done to discredit, in the hopes that people ignore everything he says.
Right, move to Mint, a parasite of Ubuntu.
Just use Ubuntu with a different UI - I use and like Gnome Shell, but there's XFCE, KDE, etc., etc.
...or closed source LAN drivers and non-free qt? Oh, that's right... those aren't problems anymore. Contemplate the short term inconvenience and long term gains required to bring about that state of affairs. If you accept "kinda good enough today" that's all you'll ever have.
Ubuntu is a bastard child. It should be lost on no one that the money Mr Shuttleworth has put into it is an investment, not a donation. Yet libre software licensing is not structured primarily to make money, it is structured to promote knowledge, and science. Attempting to monetize Debian (excuse me 'Ubuntu') is like trying to milk a Gorilla. Possible, but not pretty. Or easy. And nearly impossible to do and keep your hands clean.
'Lighten up', you say. But that is the whole point. Most of us do have compromising minds. Yes, I confess, I loaded the Nvidia binary blob. It is easy and natural for me to lighten up. Believe me I can live with myself.
But... If RMS had a compromising mind there would not be a vibrant open source universe, or at least not the one we have. (Although there would no doubt still be some sort of fuzzy academic open computing something.) The day he could not get those specs to write his modified printer driver is the day he saw -- in a flash -- the science of computing being swallowed by business. And boy was he right. He could have cashed in like so many others. Or shrugged it off like I would. But he put his obsessive uncompromising Asbergerish hairy soiled foot down and fought to create an intellectual space for computing that was free from the kind of proprietary sandboxing that hobbles progress in every field (But which makes sh*tloads of money -- Not a bad thing either). Very few people would fight as hard as RMS has to NOT make money. Amazingly many others saw the utility and necessity of what he was doing and joined him. So now, when a lab needs a specialized computing application they don't have to buy it. (They can of course.) They can build it.
RMS is not being childish in regard to Ubuntu's recent play. He is just being RMS. Monetizing open source software by crippling it is like charging for slide rides on a public playground. It's wrong. (Even if you fix and wax the slide.) Buy an empty lot. Build your own slide. Sell all the rides you want.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
"Now, some of you may share Richardâ(TM)s concerns over some aspects of this feature, and as I mentioned earlier, I am not here to convince you otherwise. Richard has every right to share his views on privacy, and who am I to tell him or you that he is/you are wrong?"
RMS quotes:
"In your Software Freedom Day events, in your FLISOL events, donâ(TM)t install or recommend Ubuntu. Instead, tell people that Ubuntu is shunned for spying."
Back to Bacon:
"These statements simply generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Ubuntu; a project that has a long history of bringing Free Software to millions of users around the world with an open community and governance."
1. RMS believes the feature constitutes spyware as I don't think anyone doubts.
2. You seem to believe he has every right to his views "who am I to tell him or you that he is/you are wrong?"
Then I fail to see how in the same breath you can assert his statement regarding being shunned for spying is childish and communicating FUD rather than the legitimate beliefs of RMS with which you agree he is entitled and with which you disagree.
To make matters worse you have resorted to an unproductive personal attack by asserting his remarks are "childish".
Linux owes EVERYTHING to the heart, idealism and intellect of free men choosing to cooperate. Yes, corporations make valuable contributions, but that is because they cannot deny the value of what the free software movement has created. If the corporations had had their way, there never would have been a linux in anything like its present form and spirit, and CERTAINLY nothing remotely like the triumph of Gnu.
Not sure what you are trying to do minimizing Gnu. If all linux owed to Gnu was gcc, then Gnu would have been the absolutely vital enabling agent, but it owes MUCH more than that. Gnu utilities are in every single case vastly superior to the BSD ones. Yes, they are standing on the shoulders of BSD giants, but when BSD saw their userland as basically finished, Gnu saw an almost infinite number of enhancements and improvements to be made, and delivered.
... or you could just use debian you know, the distribution ubuntu is based off of.
Shadus
... but in this particular case he is very right.
It IS spyware exactly how we've seen it in windows for ages. It's default-on which makes it no better than all the spyware that comes packaged with software. If it was default-off and asked at first boot/during install/whatever if it could be enabled I would have no issue.
The way it presently is setup is just dirty like all spyware.
Shadus
...and yet he's also contributed so much to the field and been right often enough that people pay notice to what he has to say.
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I've been a big fan of the FSF since around 90/91 when Peter Norton's speech introduced me to them. RMS has done tremendous things for free software. But overly aggressive and unbalanced criticism doesn't help the causes he is advocating. If the person being critiqued believes that charges are (1) simply wrong on the facts and then (2) exaggerated in the effects they just ignore the criticism. One or the other can be effective, both just comes off as unhinged.
I hate to say this, but this is becoming pattern for RMS.
Or just use Debian... which Ubuntu is a parasite of. :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
..and it'd have been so hard for Canonical to disable them by default in order not to annoy their target users? Did they really think that the people who'd choose Linux over Window or OS X on their desktop were the type to happily accept advertisements in their operating systems?
You're right though that extremists do come in all sizes, shapes, and colours. At the time the views of someone like Martin Luther King were pretty damn extreme.
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I rarely bother to log in, much less comment anymore, but I felt compelled to do so on this subject.
For context: I read the initial writeup and source article on RMS' take on Canonical's actions a few days ago here on Slashdot, as well as Mr. Bacon's response today. I've also been a happy, but increasingly disappointed Ubuntu user for a number of years now. I write this on my 10 year old laptop that hasn't had a working hard drive in 5 years (maybe 6?). This machine runs on a Kubuntu Fiesty Live CD, and my desktop dual boots Win7 and Ubuntu 12.04.
As a long-time Free Software enthusiast, I can tell you that RMS pisses me off nearly as often as I begrudgingly agree with him. I am hardly alone in that opinion of him.
Anyway, I've been less than thrilled with the Unbuntu-proper releases for the last couple of years now. Its just a simple case of the design team taking the distro in a direction that decreasingly suits my tastes, particularly on the desktop. I am not a fan of Unity. I begrudgingly used it on my desktop machine for about 2 years, and even after I got used to it, I still didn't like it. The default environment just, I dunno -- it pisses me off. And its gotten increasingly annoying to me in the last couple of releases. That alone is fine. I'm sure there are many users that like things better now. Aside from the desktop environment itself, Ubuntu distros have never failed me in terms of working well with my hardware, which is more than I can say for a couple of distros (which have probably caught up in the prevailing years for all I know.). My weird Wifi and graphics hardware just works. Thats freakin' sweet! My desktop machine currently runs Kubuntu 12.04 because I just got tired of the Unity crap. However I'm likewise not thrilled with KDE at the moment. Plasma and the file manager are only marginally less annoying to me. It pisses me off for similar, but different reasons. That's another story. I realize that I have other options within the Ubuntu ecosystem in regards to Desktop Environment, and I'm also quite aware I have options in switching distributions altogether. That isn't really my gripe.
For all that, and back on topic: RMS is totally right on this one. Yeah, he called out Ubuntu in a pretty blunt way, but it is what it is and RMS is famous for that same tone. That's sort-of Stallman's self-appointed job. It is on him to hold the highest ideal for Free Software and bark loudly when it seems something runs afoul. None of us are surprised. Mr. Bacon's retort (if you can call it that), is simply unsatisfactory because it doesn't really address the issue. If Mr. Bacon had simply accepted that the default behavior of the dash is unfavorable to the user and promised to have it reconsidered, if not changed, that would have been _something_. My personal view is that the Amazon thing should be opt-in, and even that isn't ideal, but I'd be willing to accept that and not get hung up on it.
RMS is many things, but childish and/or short-sighted are not the first words that come to my mind, even though I'm certainly not his biggest fan. I have a slightly looser requirements from my Linux distributions than those recommended by the FSF. For example, I don't really mind loading a binary blob driver from Nvidia so that I can actually use my graphics hardware. Ideologically, RMS is right, but I have shit to do NOW. We can fight the hardware/driver problem later.
At the end of the day, I will strongly consider moving from Ubuntu altogether because this is just the last straw for me. Not really for ideological reasons, but it just isn't usable for me anymore. I've never tried Mint, but enough commenters have spoken favorably of it for me to give it a go. I greatly appreciate what Canonical has done to try to bring Linux to the masses, as it were, but I feel that over time they have deviated from the spirit of what they originally set out to do. I can no longer support Canonical if they choose to continue along this path, and deeply feel that making 'sneaky' decisions like this one
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
I glossed through Jono's response and it looks like a bunch of standard manipulative corporate PR-speak, he waffles a lot of marketing-speak like "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 blah blah blah" and makes vague insinuations about the 'accuracy' of RMS's statements, calling it FUD and using ad hominem attacks like "childish" --- but nowhere does he actually bother to deny the core claim - that personal local searches are sent to the servers online. In fact, he appears to be defending the idea of doing so, claiming that not liking this is merely a subjectively "different" "privacy" preference of individuals.
Ad hominem attacks are the first refuge of a playground bully (e.g. it's the primary MO of the US Tea Party). That an Ubuntu Manager makes such an attack in a remark on a community-oriented pioneer like Stallman immediately marks the attacker, not the attacked.
Canonical made a big mistake (doing this without a thorough, public discussion), they doubled down on their mistake, and now they're taking cheap potshots at a major community figure. They're hurting themselves and FOS. Unprofessional, uncool, and unhelpful. Bad week.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Yes they can currently apparently be turned off but I don't want to be messing like that.
It's not too difficult: sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping
That said, I still agree with you. Once an OS starts to have a ton of stuff you have to turn off upon install/reinstall, I tend to want to use something else.
As an Ubuntu user I would like to bring the following data point to your attention:
- I use Linux since '95.
- I work full-time producing FOSS licensed code;
- if it wasn't for Ubuntu, I would be running OSX.
Have a nice day,