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Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth Wins Austria's Big Brother Award

Posted by Unknown on from the it-burns dept.

sfcrazy writes "Austria's Big Brother Awards awarded the coveted Big Brother Award to Ubuntu's founder Mark Shuttleworth for Ubuntu Dash's privacy reducing online extensions to local searches." From the article: "What’s bad here and raises question here is that despite repeated requests Canonical refused to make the tracking option opt-in. The feature is installed and enabled by default so the moment one install Ubuntu it starts sending info to Canonical servers until the user deliberately disables it."

8 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Wut? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If that is the biggest brother in Austria, they are living in paradise.

  2. selling data by I.M.O.G. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most people within core mass market demographics don't realize or care how much data they send, so defaults are important economically. If the financial motivations are in the wrong place, the wrong decision will be made for invested parties. I don't know of any business that is successful and doesn't exploit this general sort of opportunity. It paints Ubuntu as a villain, but its more business as usual and isn't unique to Ubuntu.

    --
    Overclockers
  3. You are small time by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can think of someone more deserving.

    --
    If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
  4. Riiiiiight... by FuzzNugget · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because, of all the privacy violators made apparent in the past several months, Canonical is clearly the worst offender.

    1. Re:Riiiiiight... by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Regardless of whether or not it reduces market share, it's behaviour that should be discouraged. There's frequently a difference between doing what's popular and what's right.

  5. Re:Freedom isn't free by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FWIW, I don't think Unity has done much to improve the desktop experience, though that is somewhat a matter of taste.

    Canonical marketed Linux to the extent that Ubuntu was tracking higher as a keyword in searches than Linux.

    I'd like to thank the KDE devs however for making Linux usable on the desktop.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  6. Re: Freedom isn't free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, how do you think they can sustain the operation and remain 'free' then?

    That's not really our problem, is it?

    Other distros doesn't use those tactics and they're doing just fine.

  7. Re:Freedom isn't free by RoboJ1M · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They do.
    The ask for a donation when you download the ISO.
    And guess what?
    They complained about that too. Very loudly indeed.
    In summary, there will always be people on forums complaining about everything.
    They will always be first and loudest.
    The people who just install it, judge it good enough and put a dollar in the hat don't go on-line to troll about it.
    Long live Mark, Canonical, Unity and Mir. ;)