Re: Down with Canonical - Boycott Ubuntu Spyware

Danyl Strype schreef op zo 27-01-2013 om 05:08 [+1300]:
> The writing's been on the wall for Ubuntu since they made Unity the
> default UI. I don't mind it myself, but that's because my main PC is
> the kind of tiny laptop for which it was designed, and perhaps because
> I voluntarily installed the "Netbook Remix" rather than having Unity
> foisted on me unawares. That decision annoyed a lot of loyal users.

It annoyed a number of vocal users, that's for sure. But unity
(especially now most of the bugs have been ironed out) is actually
pretty good. My laptop and home desktop use it, and it's reduced mouse
use (and hence increased the ability to get things done quickly) a whole
lot. Still use xmonad on my work desktop, mind. But that suits my usage
patterns there better.

> Then there was UbuntuOne, which broke the Ubuntu promise by including
> a proprietary server-side package, and which they bundled with the OS,
> giving people the reasonable expectation it was all free code:

This doesn't even make sense. There's nothing proprietary on your system
to do with it so far as I know. The server side may (I'm not sure) be
closed, but while I prefer server code to be open, it's less important
to me because I know that if I wanted my own, I could read the code and
implement one anyway. It's not like the API is hidden. 

I did note that they released the launchpad code a (fair) while back, so
it's not that they're keeping things closed out of spite: it's probable
that it's not suitable for release as it's tied closely to their
environment.

Of course, the solution would be to help Joey Hess in getting git annex
up and running and nice and smooth, as that looks really awesome. When I
finally get around to moving servers, I might look into setting it up. I
did send him a few dollars on kickstarter to help the development of it,
I assume you did the same as that is a great way of helping the free
software ecosystem.

> The final nail for me is the bundling of the Amazon spyware in the
> standard distro.
> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do

It's not Amazon spyware. That's a total misrepresentation. It's like
saying that google is spyware because you're telling it what you want to
know about (and it gives you results.) Many browsers also send things to
google as you're typing, just fyi. Also, if you look in the "privacy"
section of the settings, you can turn off all network related search
functions. Cos it also searches youtube and stuff for you too.

That said, I do wish it wasn't on the primary search screen, mostly
because it's of little use to me. So, I removed it which is easy to do,
unlike spyware.

> This is unforgivably Microsoftish. I'm removing Ubuntu from all my

No, it's not.

> machines, and researching alternatives to recommend to anyone I've
> ever helped migrate to Ubuntu. At the moment I'm using Debian stable,
> which reminds me of Ubuntu circa 2009/10. Peppermint is nice if you

Yes, Ubuntu sure has pushed the desktop environment along a fair way.
And yet you're trying to pull them down for it. Shame on you for
attempting to chop down the fastest advancing member of the Linux
community. You're trying to ruin it for the rest of us.

Funnily enough, there are a couple of things they do that I'm not too
happy with from a free software point of view, but it's none of the ones
you mention. And I solve it by not using nor promoting the aspects I
don't agree with.

Robin.

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