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Ubuntu Disputes 'Ads In MOTD' Claims (twitter.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the softening-systemd-suspicions dept.

Thursday Lproven (Slashdot reader #6030) wrote: It appears that Ubuntu is using a feature it has added -- intended to insert headlines of breaking tech news (security alerts and so on) into the Message of the Day displayed at login to the console -- to display advertising and promotional messages.
The message in question linked to a Hacker Noon article titled "How HBO's Silicon Valley built 'Not Hotdog' with mobile TensorFlow, Keras & React Native." Later that day Dustin Kirkland, a Ubuntu Product Manager for the feature's design (and the Core Developer for its implementation) suggested the message had been mistaken for an ad, describing it on Hacker News as a "fun fact... an interesting tidbit of potpourri from the world of Ubuntu," and later saying it was intended like Google's doodles. "Last week's message actually announced an Ubuntu conference in Latin America. The week before, we linked to an article asking for feedback on Kubuntu. Before that, we announced the availability of Extended Security Maintenance updates for 12.04. And so on." He later confirmed Canonical received no money for the message, and also pointed out that the messages all come from an open source repository, and "You're welcome to propose your own messages for merging, if you have a well formatted, informative message for Ubuntu users."

Click through for a condensed version of the complete response by Dustin Kirkland, Ubuntu Product and Strategy at Canonical.
Kirkland describes the design of the feature as follows:
  • Asynchronously, about 60 seconds after boot, a systemd timer fires which runs "/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news --force"
  • It sources 3 admin-editable config variables in /etc/default/motd-news. The defaults are: ENABLED=1, URLS="https://motd.ubuntu.com", WAIT="5"
  • The admin can disable it entirely (ENABLED=0), change or add other MOTD news sources (your corporate IT team could run its own), and change the wait time in seconds
  • If it's enabled, that systemd timer job will loop over each of the URLS (note, that it's important that these should be https with valid SSL certificates), trim them to 80 characters per line, and a maximum of 10 lines, and concatenate them to a cache file in /var/cache/motd-news
  • Every ~12 hours thereafter (with a little bit of random timer fuzzing), this systemd timer job will re-run and update the /var/cache/motd-news
  • Upon login, the contents of /var/cache/motd-news is just printed to screen.

Kirkland notes the message can be customized by local IT administrators, or used to deliver warnings about serious vulnerabilities like Shellshock or Heartbleed. And he also describes the dynamic motd as a Ubuntu feature since adopted by other distros (including Debian) as "a flexible framework that enables distro packages or administrators to add executable scripts in /etc/update-motd.d/* to generate informative, interesting messages displayed at login... for almost 40 years of Linux/UNIX, the 'Message of the Day' was anything but that... It was a message that was created at one point in time, when the distro released, and that's about it. And we managed to change that."

7 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Tech Industry Robber Barons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Tech industry robber barons have finally destroyed the last vestige of Unix freedom.

    The message of the day is for local news to local users.

    MOTD is off limits to vendors, you money grubbing assholes!

    You damn kids, get off my box!

    1. Re: Tech Industry Robber Barons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Linux never was free. You're at the mercy of developers who would rather push their GNU/communist agenda rather than produce quality software. If they decide you should have to use systemd, you're either stick with systemd or a distribution that lacks the support of bigger distributions. If they decide that a high quality piece of proprietary software, such as a video driver, should be pulled from the distribution, you're stuck with an inferior open source product. You never truly had any freedom unless you have the time to maintain and develop your own distribution, which almost nobody has the time to do. The developers don't care about your best interests, and often engage in pissing contests that fork projects, again at the expense of users. There is very little true freedom in open source unless you're willing to develop everything from scratch. You're at the mercy of developers who certainly don't care about the best interests of users. Freedom my ass.

    2. Re: Tech Industry Robber Barons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sounds like neither open nor proprietary software is the way to go. So what should we do? Become luddites?

    3. Re: Tech Industry Robber Barons by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You have the freedom to live in a home that's any colour you like, as long as you're willing to paint it or hire someone to do so.

      According to the parent, this isn't freedom.

      Discuss.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  2. Double Standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When Microsoft places ads in the form of recommended apps in Windows 10, it's denounced as evil. When Ubuntu places ads in the MOTD, it's somehow okay and completely acceptable. It's not unlike Ubuntu sending searches to the internet by default to retrieve recommendations for the user. Of course, this was also tolerated and considered acceptable. There's a double standard in which Microsoft is criticized for the very things open source also does. Now, I'll surely get censored by aggressive moderators who would prefer rather to mod me down to -1 rather than discuss the hypocrisy in what is otherwise an open source echo chamber.

    1. Re:Double Standard by cas2000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, neither of those actions by Ubuntu are or were considered acceptable or tolerable. The phone-home search bullshit caused a huge outcry and many complaints until Ubuntu stopped fucking doing it. The MOTD phone-home has just happened and is at the very early stage of that same process.

      Microsoft gets complained about more often when it does this shit because it does it far more often and far more comprehensively. Also, Microsoft either ignores complaints, or pretends to "accommodate consumer feedback" and then just does it again, more sneakily at a lower level in the system so it's even harder to get rid of.

      It doesn't matter at all who does it.

  3. two points by cas2000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. phone-home shit like this is evil and companies like ubuntu should just STOP. FUCKING. DOING. IT.

    2. it's a bit fucking rich for hackernoon to complain about this when you can't even view their web site without enabling javascript from at least 6 different sites. They should just stop fucking doing that shit too.