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Ubuntu Software Center Criticized For Mixing Free and Non-Free Software
An anonymous reader writes: Tony Mobily has been watching the evolution of the Ubuntu Software Center for quite a while now. He had doubts about its interface and its speed, but liked the fact that it offered an easy, down-to-earth interface that allowed users to install software conveniently. However, the evolution of USC is worrying him a lot. Mobily is against confusing proprietary software with non-proprietary software, which USC seems to be doing. USC plays an important role — especially for newbie users, who can use it to discover new software more readily than via the package management system. But is there room for improvement?
Tony? Who the fuck is Tony?
Most people don't care. Specifically: Most people just want to be able to get work done, they don't care about your moral highchair.
I suppose, if they are not segregating the software by license, shouldn't be so difficult to do, just add another column...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
$0BSD is dying.
How *dare* someone think about how useful a program is for the user!
Free Software is not about being useful, Free Software is about pushing an ideological viewpoint onto people. Anything that gets in the way of proselytizing our particular viewpoint is anathema, and should be burned at the stake.
By the way, have you taken GNU into your heart and accepted RMS as your computational savior? Here, have a free KDevelop 3.0 Bible, and feel free to make copies and give it to your friends.
Ubuntu software center is slow, crappy, sometimes unresponsive. The first thing I do is install Synaptic package manager.
Most people don't care. Specifically: Most people just want to be able to get work done, they don't care about your moral highchair.
More like an anti-proprietary fetish, or political extremism, than anything to do with morality. If a person chooses to use a proprietary program there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I suppose, if they are not segregating the software by license, shouldn't be so difficult to do, just add another column...
Why bother taking screen space from more useful info? That small minority that cares can check the software's website before download or read the license before installation if they are not already familiar with software.
I do think the Ubuntu Software Center could be better designed for those who care about free software- but ultimately there isn't much positive to be said in the direction Canonical is taking things overall. The company doesn't care about freedom. They care about profits above all else. I wouldn't mind someone introducing a solid distribution with a severely limited set of non-free bits that was a better middle ground for novice users wishing to switch to a completely free system- but for whom it isn't feasible or isn't feasible yet. Trisquel is pretty easy to use, but it's not good enough, for those who're at risk of returning to Microsoft Windows should they find they're unable to cope with the difficulty of living without non-free software.
What we need is a distribution that includes Cinnamon, an Ubuntu base (to ensure smooth upgrades), and only a minimal set of possibly essential non-free software. Ubuntu Mate actually comes pretty close, but it's a dying solution with problems of its own (inherrited from GNOME 2 for which it is built).
Canonical has its problems, but I don't think you can say that all they care about is profits. They have also released a lot of free software -- more than most of us can claim. I think they care more about user experience than free software, and yes, that can be a problem...
That a once vibrant and relevant tech mag is reduced to giving a home to such garbage!
If the user experience is for shit (and yes, lots of software behaves like shit) then you have a problem, but it's not the price.
I totally agree. But... in my article I don't complain about USC having non-free software!
And if the proprietary software is declared as such but is *better than* the free software, that's not OK? Not sure you meant to say what your sentence seems to.
Its time for linux to get over the "free software" hang up. Its blocking adoption of the system by a larger audience.
Guess what. Most people want something that works, and most of them are willing to pay for it.
I like the USC because I am able to find software I actually will use and install it without too much pain. Installing proprietary software on Linux is too difficult and is hindering adoption. I want things like Minecraft. Crash plan, Steam, etc. And I want them to work.
I guess thats why the Ubuntu machine is only my server. The Mac does the heavy lifting for computing in the house. Why? Because it just works. It always works. I don't have to fuck with it when I need to accomplish something.
I am staring to think the FOSS community doesn't ever need to accomplish something. Because I guarantee doing ANYTHING takes longer on Linux. And time is money.
Johnathan Riddell is an asshole, full stop. It's only with the entitled, paranoid Kubuntu dweebs that have any problems. All other flavor projects get along just fine with Ubuntu/Canonical. I really wish Riddell's employer, Blue Systems, would stop being such a fucking parasite and host their own goddamn distro so Ubuntu would be rid of Riddell's bullshit.
The appropriate term would be ethical. It is an ethical, i.e. subjective or untestable objective decision. Of course what your favorite ice cream is an ethical choice too.
Honest question. I want to know.
The latest release of Debian - called jessie is quite nice. There are good reasons to use an operating system that makes it clear what is free(as in freedom) software and what is not. Non free software can be fine - but often you and your personal information is the real product.
I would further say - without diminishing the work contributed by other distros - Debian is the heart and core of Open source software.
Open source has always found the greatest success in platform software and tool chains, not in desktop software and stuff like that. It's not exactly rocket science why that is the case. Most desktop software has effectively no support-based commercial model that could work for it. To support full time employees, such a project must sell licenses, not support packages. Take Adobe products. Who in their right mind would pay a few thousand dollars for "support?" Only a handful of idiots and people who just want to throw money at software they like. Firefox only worked because of the Google (now Yahoo) deal. Otherwise Mozilla would be screwed.
If you want commercial-grade desktop software, you must support a commercial software model. Ubuntu is doing precisely that. I applaud them for doing that because there are plenty of ways for FOSS advocates to encourage companies pushing commercial software on Linux to be FOSS-friendly. Building a slick app for KDE with cross-platform in mind? How about encourage them to use QML, Qt's webkit and Qt's JavaScript support for extensions and such? Heck, they can even make the Linux-focused parts open source under a BSD or MIT-like license so that the commercial software can really take advantage of desktop Linux.
Do not type and hit a bong simultaneously.
Try reading the summary again. This is not about whether or not Ubuntu includes proprietary software--it ALWAYS has.
This is about whether or not proprietary software is clearly identified as such. This is useful for pragmatic reasons, not just ideological. I prefer to avoid proprietary software if there is an alternative, simply because it tends to be considerably less future-proof. If it's an end user application, I don't want to waste my time learning an interface that is more likely than not going to stagnate (with no possibility for a fork or a manual build) or get loaded up with crapware features. If it's a driver then I'm a little less likely to go out of my way to avoid it, but I will certainly look at the alternatives if it's a binary blob and I will make a mental note of what hardware doesn't have a good open source driver for future purchases, purely on the basis of future proofing, compatibility and security concerns.
Call me paranoid, but I really have to wonder what the motivation of the anti-Stallman brigade is. His ideas, like them or hate them, aren't negatively affecting anyone at this point. (This is assuming we ignore the fools who insist the GPL is killing Linux; the GPL has enabled access to a plethora of corporate-sponsored contributions that otherwise would have certainly been closed source. If you want to count OS X as a win for the BSD community that is your prerogative, but it is nowhere near customizable enough for my needs. If you want to pretend that Google would have open sourced Android out of the goodness of their heart even if they had been building on a 100% permissive-licensed codebase from the very beginning, you need to pull your head out of the sand.)
Proprietary stuff is and has been widely available. Nobody uses Gnewsense. There is no significant movement to remove proprietary software from the vast majority of distros. But there is every reason in the world to clearly indicate which pieces of software are proprietary... not so we can try to mindlessly boycott it, but so we can take into account how this might affect us in very real, non-ideological ways.
I feel the need to introduce myself. I am Tony Mobily.
Yes we know who you are.
> And if the proprietary software is declared as such but is *better than* the free software, that's not OK?
We ran into this with SCO OpenServer . SCO OpenServer was a pretty good closed source UNIX. The company casually published freeware, open source, and proprietary tools. They then turned on the free software community with fraudulent claims of copyright violation in the Linux kernel, claims made against both other software companies but also against those companies' clients. Much of the legal history of the event is available at http://www.groklaw.net/: one of the problems that extended the lawsuits was SCO's unwillingness to specify, or document, their claims. One of the factors that helped Red Hat in the resulting legal mess was the clear provenance and licensing of every bit of Red Hat code, and Red Hat's very clear careful licensing and segregation of proprietary, closed source tools, and of open source tools for which they could publish the source code and their modifications.
Please read what you comment on.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
And I have zero problems with the way they have Ubuntu Software Center set up. There are no issues separating free and non-free, all you have to do is look. Ubuntu is awesome and if they want to sell apps to bring in a little revenue, that's all good in my book. I've done 90% of work on Ubuntu now for years, so they're way in the plus column in my book.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The mess, as you admit, was a fallacious filing. That has nothing to do with free software being better.
Yes, yes and yes. Thank you.
The mess was _controlled_, and protected from, because the Linux kernel had a clear and open trail for all of its source. This isn't available for closed source software. Litigious companies, especially software copyright trolls and patent trolls, can and do make fallacious claims as a matter of course: the clean and clear provenance of free software, and of most open source software, help prevent exactly such lawsuits. I've faced them and, generally, been able to protect me and my clients from such suits.
The _patent_ trolls are a whole other layer of problem. The GPLv3 was created to help with those, and it has.
Hi Shuttleworth, you forgot to log in :)
I can see why you are afraid of Kubuntu but at least you recognised KDE is better than Unity.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Duuuhhhh, only a minority of people speak English, yes it is since the end of WWII the De Facto Lingua Franca of this world but why the hell would we translate everything in English?
If my language preference for the OS is "English" only english books should show up. If I change my language preference to "French" I would only expect French books to show up by default. When you go to Amazon you aren't going to see a bunch of books outside of your native language unless you specifically start searching and teach the site that you speak say Italian.
Afraid of Kubuntu? Canonical owns the fucking trademark. If it wanted, it could get rid of Kubuntu at any time it wants, and poor little Riddell and Kitterman couldn't do a thing about it. KDE better than Unity? Kubuntu isn't even the second-most used flavor of Ubuntu. It's a laugh how much certain Kubuntu people overestimate their importance. Ha Ha!
The overlay ad was there because I am rebooting Free Software Magazine
I encourage you to have a look through the TCDR blog.
You can't handle a simple HTML hyperlink
It's easier said than done. Forums running Slash, Scoop, Lithium, or Vanilla software use an HTML subset to make hyperlinks. But some forums expect Markdown, BBCode, or some other proprietary markup instead of an HTML subset. Other forums censor all posts containing URLs that are posted by anonymous or new users in order to prevent spam. Still others censor all posts containing any URL, such as comment sections below Cracked.com articles and pre-Google+ comment sections below YouTube videos. And many forums don't even offer a preview before posting, including the mobile version of Slashdot last time I tried it.
because the Ethernet support wasn't completely GPL, Debian did not distribute the code in the default installation package to actually put Debian on this server.
A free software purist would use that as an excuse to replace the server hardware with a different machine that is fully compatible with free software. Are there any Respects Your Freedom certified servers yet?
Each Anonymous Coward is rate-limited to post only a small number of comments per hour or per day. Registered users are also rate limited based on their "karma" rating, which is based on moderation of their past comments. So there are probably several users who are posting anonymously.
As a practical example, look at all the ARM SBCs around. People would like to use them as a little always-on Skype phone, or as a Teamspeak client so their gaming system doesn't have to bother with it. Those programs don't have compatible, open alternatives, and they don't have ARM Linux versions available.
I have Skype installed on my Nexus 7 tablet. It has an ARM CPU and a Linux-based operating system called Android. Or by "Linux" did you mean "X11/Linux"? In that case, why can't you run AOSP in a chroot and load Skype.apk into that?
Proprietary software does prohibit running a program except on those few platforms that the publisher has blessed. If a program is available only for x86, you won't be able to run it on your ARM SBC. Free software, on the other hand, can be recompiled for a different architecture.
Or where he's gonna go,
I guess he's got his reasons, but I just don't wanna know
'Cos for twenty four years I've been living next door to...
Tony
Tony? Who the fuck is Tony?
NSFW, 'nuff said. (^_^)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Hmm, ok so propretery sw wast listed with the word free in the price column insted of $0, I see no problem with that, add a column for license people that care about licenses can easely spot the difference
I prefer to avoid proprietary software if there is an alternative
You are a Slashdot user. Ubuntu has not and never will target you with their desktop platform. You deserve a better class of distro.
Ubuntu target one kind of user with the desktop distribution, the kind who couldn't give a crap about whether a distribution is or is not proprietary.
If this were Debian or Arch creating this kind of repo then I say we man the pitchforks.
You do the Ubuntu crowd a disservice (and yes, I was a user back in the Hoary Hedgehog days, and these days I find Ubuntu-based Mint to be a fairly handy go-to distro when I want a desktop that just works.) Ubuntu users are not synonymous with the Windows or OS X user.
That doesn't mean they are all literate on the command line or that they understand a lot of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, but I daresay most of them understand the difference between open source vs. proprietary.
Even an asterisk for the non-free (as in gratis) would be good. I have not used Ubuntu in a long time but if they have paid software they could use, I do not know, maybe a dollar/pound/euro/etc sign?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Most users do not care about software being free as in speech. Being free as in beer is the major selling (!) point.
Most of the time they are even to surrender any privacy for free (as in beer) stuff.
I'm not doing anything at all to the Ubuntu crowd. I am stating what Ubuntu's own goal was, which was to bring Linux to the masses. To achieve that goal they have considerably dumbed it down and worked a lot on user friendliness. It is one of the most insulating distributions I've ever used, and by that I mean it is a distribution that tries to hide its Linuxness. (Not so much as Lindows but it does it's best).
One of the ways of simplifying things down is to remove things that "people" in general don't care about. "People" (I use quotes to separate it from the Slashdot user base) couldn't care less about openness, and to "people" free has one and only one meaning.
The Ubuntu Software Centre is a tidy program when it comes to listing what is available in the repositories AND gives the option of displaying paid programs for users who may buy them... I see no problem here and they are clearly listed with the price below...
As much as I prefer open-source software, certain users will need to buy a particular program or game...
Android is not Linux based. It is Linux hosted. Android is effectively another operating system, an Android developer or user does not see Linux at all. In theory Linux could be replaced by BSD and users and nearly all developers would not notice or care. As for the few developers doing native code, many are making Posix calls, not anything Linux specific, so many of these would not care either.
This is about whether or not proprietary software is clearly identified as such. This is useful for pragmatic reasons, not just ideological..
Now, let's look at this pragmatically:
What do people want when they open the software center? They want to find software (probably do to some specific task).
And they want to know if they can download it for free or if it costs them anything.
The vast majority of people using the software center don't care about licences or source code, as they only want to use the software.
So the pragmatic solution is do make a distinction between free (as in beer) and pay-for software.
Making a distinction between closed source and open source or between limiting and less limiting licences doesn't add anything for the vast majority of users.
Sounds like a good idea or just label them like Google does in play store.
I'll say it again, the average Ubuntu user might not be tremendously technically proficient but they do tend to understand the difference between proprietary-free and open source-free. Many of them probably don't grasp all of the ramifications of that distinction, but I will say most of them are at least aware that there is a distinction. So, just show it to them and let them decide. It would take up a miniscule amount of screen real estate. Just because you can't imagine people caring doesn't mean none of them will.
The distinction between proprietary and open source is absolutely massive on Windows at the moment. Example: Free proprietary PDF readers (Adobe, Foxit, etc.) are a friggin nightmare, crammed with all kinds of stupid unnecessary features and malware / crapware and then unnecessary functionality changes between releases and perhaps nagware to get a premium version. The solution is simple: install Evince and forget about it. If anything bad ever happens to it (although I doubt there will), it will be forked. I don't have to worry about "creative monetizing" shenanigans and I will never have to waste one minute re-learning anything. Same goes for 7-zip over winzip or winrar, and for VLC player vs. proprietary third party media players, etc. The best advice you can give to anyone looking for a free Windows program for regular use is to try to see if there's an open source project that does what they want.
The situation is generally not quite this dire on Linux at the moment, but this can easily change. The fact is the long-term prospects of any project massively, massively depend on whether or not a for-profit company has total control of it. If it is true that most Ubuntu users don't grasp this, well, the easiest way to educate them is to put a little [Proprietary] stamp on stuff and over the course of 5+ years let them watch as half of their proprietary programs die off or get crapped up, while 90%+ of their [Open Source] stamped programs survive (possibly in forked form.)
That doesn't mean they are all literate on the command line or that they understand a lot of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, but I daresay most of them understand the difference between open source vs. proprietary.
Don't confuse knowing the difference with caring about it. I've using Linux since the late 1990's. I have a CS degree and am a programmer for a living. I understand very well the "free in beer vs free as in speech" argument.
HOWEVER, most people really only care about the "zero cost" definition of free. And when it comes to open source most only care about the source actually being available, not whether its under the GPL or not.
"Libre" as it is applied by the zealots is a concept that only a very small subset of computer users care about - even if they understand it. You're not going to get them outraged by explaining it.
Consider the opposite: lets say Ubuntu listed software as "Free", but when you clicked install it prompted you for payment credentials for $5, with the justification being that you're free to modify the source and do as you wish, but the software has a monetary cost. THEN you'd see outrage because it'd be stepping on the definition of free that people actually care about.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
People are anti-Stallman because most people are pragmatists instead of idealists. I applaud the man's ideals. I'm willing to give up a certain amount of my time and treasure to promoting, using, debugging, and creating open source software. I don't consider user software freedoms important enough to be absolutist about. As you say, the primary benefit of open source is that it remains more valuable in the long run, and most people don't have the luxury of only considering the long run.
Personally, I think that distinguishing between open and proprietary licensing sounds simple and sensible. Stallman is in some important aspects a religious figure, and it's worth noting that being a saint or otherwise devoted to a moral principle is historically an excellent way to be stoned to death. Also, as a trivial UI change it's practically guaranteed to lead to weeks-long flamewars. In other words, it's pretty much the raison d'être of slashdot.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
This may or may not be the attitude of the majority of users going in, but if you are clear upfront about which programs are proprietary and which are open source then people will learn on their own that open source programs are simply more reliable in a future-proof sense. (Much less likely to stagnate without a fork, or to be overhauled with a crappy new interface, or suddenly modified to include malware/crapware features.) It might take them a few years to figure this out, but you can assist in the learning experience by clearly labeling what is and is not open source.
See the examples I give in this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
If the quality of the software is otherwise equal, free software is better; I think that's the point that Teun was making. You can build it for any computer you like, and there is less worry about it being abandoned because new people can get the source and run with it. But no, it's not the case that the free software application for purpose X is always higher in quality than the non-free application for X.
First, there is the question of whether non-free software should be in the Ubuntu Software Center at all. The purist camp of free software, personified by Richard Stallman, believe that it should not. Shuttleworth's vision of Ubuntu includes availability of non-free software, so trying to argue that point will not change Ubuntu. People who want a completely free software distribution are free to create one, and many are already available.
The second question is about disclosure. Some of feel that the USC should be more clear about the licensing of software; that it should be clear when you are downloading whether you are getting something with a free software license, something with available source but a restrictive license, or something that is available only in binary form with no source code availability. (Programs that you have to pay for are already easy to tell apart.) I believe that improved license disclosure can be consistent with the mission of Ubuntu, and that the community should urge Canonical to make that happen.
It's completely the opposite in my experience. Generally, the proprietary programs -- especially the ones I don't have to try to compile myself -- work more reliably and are more feature complete than the open-source ones.
I hate reading a software manual that starts with compilation instructions. That sort of information should be in an appendix at the end for the few users who need that information.
I wasn't talking about the performance in one single instant in time'; I was talking about using the same piece of proprietary software (remember, this is FREE proprietary, not $$$-proprietary) over the course of several years. Do you have any examples of this working out for you? Because my experience is that free proprietary software does not say free, does not stay updated, does not stay malware-free and/or does not stay usable for very long.