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Ubuntu 16.04 Will Not Send Local Searches Over the Web By Default
jones_supa writes: Canonical introduced Amazon Product Results as part of Ubuntu 12.10, which meant that local searches performed by a user in Dash were also sent online. This made many Ubuntu users spill their coffee and got criticism from EFF and FSF as well. The so called "Shopping Lens" had to be manually disabled if that kind of search behavior was not desired. Finally after years, Canonical is reacting to the negative feedback and respecting users' privacy, so that Ubuntu 16.04 (the next Long Term Support release) won't send local searches over the web by default. The Amazon search feature is still available for those who explicitly want to use it.
a marauding mass of menacing muslims invade europe
What happened? Is it not cool now that Windows is doing it too?
Canonical will never regain my trust. The mere fact that they were capable of sending users' private data to their business partners means Ubuntu is dead for me.
Canonical reacted to user feedback? That must be a first.
I thought people went to Debian or Fedora when they turned their GUI into a Fisher Price Tablet.
Welcome back, old friend. I'm glad they've changed their stance. Not happy it ever was their stance, but I'm glad they've changed it none the less. Keep up the good work Canonical!
It's all thanks to systemd.
Amazon not paying enough?
The likeliest explanation is that Amazon is no longer paying Canonical enough money for this to be default behavior.
Seriously Canonical, didn't you have a meeting on this with the classic PRO vs CON list? Was it inconceivable that some would not like being tracked, even anonymously(if true) and a large portion of that population would be the geeks who you NEED? People, like geeks, who know what GNU/Linux is, why it is used and spread that far and wide and were using Ubuntu and promoting it if not developing for it. Pissing those people off and causing them to move to Debian for example was not a good idea.
Good to see 16.04 LTS will disable this next year but you really screwed the pooch as they say on this one.
So, did they apologize?
Most people who use Linux know that Anonymous collection of data isn't all that anonymous To quote Princess Bride "I don't think that means what you think that means"
I avoid Unity like the plague. If they want to default to providing a "smartphone" interface on my has-a-keyboard-and-mouse, doesn't-have-a-touchscreen computer, there are plenty of alternatives like XFCE, Mate, Cinnamon, etc.
Usually, the idea is that open source means wide spread adoption and a tiny fraction of that, like 0.01%, can be monetized. Or, another idea is to send marketing to the masses of users, which is what Canonical was doing.
In the end, people and companies just don't want to pay for anything if they can. As a result, open source companies need to find other income streams and everybody tries to "opt-out" of that if they can.
The best uses are are self-serving contributions, like devices drivers, CPU patches, etc. And, internal use for lowering costs, and some companies like Facebook who use it a lot can open source and share the burden. And, use as product components since no need to pay the original contributors. Just throw a bunch of open source stuff together, call it a product, and offer support for it.
Ubuntu, now with 35% less buttfuckage!
Or, if one is offended by misquotes: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
About time Ubuntu!
Han Solo is killed by his son, Kylo Ren. Luke doesn't say anything and has 30 seconds of screentime. Kylo Ren survives the explosion at the end, leaving it set up for him to be the villain in the next movie.
So is it now approved by Stallman?
If the product is free, you are actually the product. Look at pretty much everything that is handed to you free: there's always some kind of catch.
It's been integrated into systemd.
There is anonymous to the advertisers and then there is anonymous to the NSA. Different levels of anonymous so it really depends on what the definition of anonymous is.
Are you certain this was exactly what the OP had in mind when mentioning anonymous in the post?
... when Mark Shuttleworth formed Canonical, one of the strongest claims they made was that ubuntu would always be free. I *do* appreciate that Canonical's activation of the spyware feature was publicised and only relevent to users of the Dash in the Unity desktop, and also aware that it's a bit of a leap of faith to suggest that 12.10 and onwards were anything other than free, but the fact remained that Canonical started to take kickbacks from Amazon - payment - for data generated by ubuntu users. In other words, ubuntu users were doing stuff that resulted in Canonical getting paid. This doesn't - quite - meet up to "free"... Like the parent post to which you responded, my reaction to the announcement was to continue to run on 12.04 LTS for a bit longer than expected, then make the switch to Mint, initially [and currently] on the ubuntu-derived Mint edition, but with testing currently underway to complete a migration to LMDE 2.0. But from my perspective the key point was that my decision was to literally and completely walk away from ubuntu/Canonical. I didn't agree with the ethics of their decision and the *only* mechanism I had to voice my opinion was to drop their product like a hot potato, which I did. I had been a user of ubuntu since 5.04, Hoary Hedgehog. I got to ubuntu via Mandrake/Mandriva, which in turn I got to after getting annoyed with Red Hat. Once bitten, twice shy. Perhaps the unique perspective here is that users of Linux are, by definition, very much aware of the impacts of acts like this from Canonical. I dare say that there are many GNU/Linux users out there today [well, I'm one] who once used Windows but got so disenfranchised at the machinations and underhand practices of Microsoft that they decided to walk. In any scenario where it becomes clear that a party is acting in an underhand or dishonourable way, the single, simplest response we have in our power is to stop using any product by such an un-trusted source. ~10 years ago I gave up on Microsoft because they were blatantly not trustworthy. 4 years ago I gave up on Canonical/ubuntu for the same reason. I can't say for certain whether Mint will continue to be honourable, but if they slip, I'll move on. Eventually [I hope] enough of us will do that such that companies realise that they "can't get away with it" and will treat their users with respect. Today companies are so big that no amount of end-user action, short of "walk", will bring about a change. Even a non-profit has to be relevant.
My company already migrated the workstations from Ubuntu to a different distro back when Canonical did this. Between their absolutely horrible initial Pulse implementation, the absolutely craptastic Unity interface being rammed down our throats, and then the totally sneaky way they brought in the Dash searches, we had had enough.
.. now where did I hide my favourite picture called bustytrollopbentonfascinatingangle.jpg?
Oh...not on google..oops!
My brain actually froze when I reached the quoted sentence above. After years what now? I normally don't respond to editing but this was a pretty bad one.
Maybe
That's probably not perfect either but it's a hell of a lot easier to read.
Not at all a coincidence that the NSA just shut down a dragnet program...
UbuNSA.