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Look, I am sympathetic to Canonical, and a lot of those on the other side of the debate do feel a but scummy. They do strike a certain impression of people who

Look, I am sympathetic to Canonical, and a lot of those on the other side of the debate do feel a but scummy. They do strike a certain impression of people who just want something for free, like a cartoonish stereotype of a freeloader. That said, I do feel like a lot of the pushback that Canonical got would have been avoided if they just didn't try to advertise in terminal output, as benign as it was in my opinion. I don't know what the right answer is. Clearly some sort of balance has worked for both Red Hat (although that is shifting) and Canonical, it's just a question of whether pulling too hard into things people feel is scummy will stand the test of time.

rlpb 4y ago
The current complaint about "advertising" is telling users about further updates that they can receive for free, because Canonical has customers paying to make them available. Telling users about updates that are available to them for free seems like a reasonable thing to do when they run the CLI tool designed for humans that checks for updates ("apt", vs. "apt-get" which is for scripting). It's only speculation that this will be a general advertising channel. But that speculation seems to have turned into (false) fact through the grapevine. Because Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu's leader, and Canonical's CEO) has publicly committed the following: "I do think it would be reasonable to expect the news to be related to updates and changes in the archive that are interesting for someone using apt, rather than general news, so can happily agree to set that policy and expectation amongst the folk who have write access to the news." (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-advantage-tools/+bug/1992026/comments/18 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-advantage-t...) So now, when someone complains about "advertising", I'm never sure if they're complaining about what's actually present, or this speculation about the future that Mark has committed to not doing anyway.
- jabl 4y ago
  If apt printing out a small message about Ubuntu Pro, or some short commercial about Ubuntu Pro or Canonical's cloud offerings/whatever show up in motd, I think that's a small price to pay if that ensures the financial wellbeing of Canonical and thus a sustainable future for Ubuntu. Arguably the Amazon search thing Canonical had in Unity some years ago was sleazy, but the above isn't AFAIU doing any data mining on users or such.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    I think this is a reasonable perspective. Perhaps part of the paranoia (beyond FOSS kids' usual neuroses) was the Amazon search debacle, and thus this fits a pre-existing narrative about Canonical being a scummy corporation or whatever. If the events were reversed--or rather, the Amazon search never happened--the extreme fringe of FOSS users would be more easier to ignore.
- noobermin 4y ago
  To be very clear, I am relaying their argument, in good faith. I do agree that it is mere speculation that we will see general ads in the terminal, and that is just the annoying nerds of FOSS communities being their usual annoying selves. I am closer to your opinion on that. That said, what I read was clearly an ad, just a benign one[0]. May be we are talking about different things, but this is what I saw. I reiterate, I think this ad is rather benign, and people worrying this means Ubuntu will start selling general targeted text ads or whatever in terminal space is just a bit much. That Ubuntu Pro has a "free tier" doesn't really matter in that front. For example, I'd consider plastering notices about a heritage walk around your city where you'd may be ask for donations (using a local example in singapore) is still something I'd call "advertising." I'd call old classifieds in newspapers ads, ads need not only be for things you make money directly from or at all. Anyway, I'll stop nit-picking here. The point I want to make is this reminds me for example about freeware or shareware notices in DOS programs. Again, rather benign, and I am not that upset about it. That said, it's not hard to foresee how it would not have elicited the response it would have given the attitude in FOSS, and that itself is an unforced error on Canonical's part. [0] https://twitter.com/omgubuntu/status/1574759306544701443/photo/1 https://twitter.com/omgubuntu/status/1574759306544701443/pho...

rlpb 4y ago

The current complaint about "advertising" is telling users about further updates that they can receive for free, because Canonical has customers paying to make them available. Telling users about updates that are available to them for free seems like a reasonable thing to do when they run the CLI tool designed for humans that checks for updates ("apt", vs. "apt-get" which is for scripting). It's only speculation that this will be a general advertising channel. But that speculation seems to have turned into (false) fact through the grapevine. Because Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu's leader, and Canonical's CEO) has publicly committed the following: "I do think it would be reasonable to expect the news to be related to updates and changes in the archive that are interesting for someone using apt, rather than general news, so can happily agree to set that policy and expectation amongst the folk who have write access to the news." (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-advantage-tools/+bug/1992026/comments/18 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-advantage-t...) So now, when someone complains about "advertising", I'm never sure if they're complaining about what's actually present, or this speculation about the future that Mark has committed to not doing anyway.

jabl 4y ago
If apt printing out a small message about Ubuntu Pro, or some short commercial about Ubuntu Pro or Canonical's cloud offerings/whatever show up in motd, I think that's a small price to pay if that ensures the financial wellbeing of Canonical and thus a sustainable future for Ubuntu. Arguably the Amazon search thing Canonical had in Unity some years ago was sleazy, but the above isn't AFAIU doing any data mining on users or such.
- noobermin 4y ago
  I think this is a reasonable perspective. Perhaps part of the paranoia (beyond FOSS kids' usual neuroses) was the Amazon search debacle, and thus this fits a pre-existing narrative about Canonical being a scummy corporation or whatever. If the events were reversed--or rather, the Amazon search never happened--the extreme fringe of FOSS users would be more easier to ignore.
noobermin 4y ago
To be very clear, I am relaying their argument, in good faith. I do agree that it is mere speculation that we will see general ads in the terminal, and that is just the annoying nerds of FOSS communities being their usual annoying selves. I am closer to your opinion on that. That said, what I read was clearly an ad, just a benign one[0]. May be we are talking about different things, but this is what I saw. I reiterate, I think this ad is rather benign, and people worrying this means Ubuntu will start selling general targeted text ads or whatever in terminal space is just a bit much. That Ubuntu Pro has a "free tier" doesn't really matter in that front. For example, I'd consider plastering notices about a heritage walk around your city where you'd may be ask for donations (using a local example in singapore) is still something I'd call "advertising." I'd call old classifieds in newspapers ads, ads need not only be for things you make money directly from or at all. Anyway, I'll stop nit-picking here. The point I want to make is this reminds me for example about freeware or shareware notices in DOS programs. Again, rather benign, and I am not that upset about it. That said, it's not hard to foresee how it would not have elicited the response it would have given the attitude in FOSS, and that itself is an unforced error on Canonical's part. [0] https://twitter.com/omgubuntu/status/1574759306544701443/photo/1 https://twitter.com/omgubuntu/status/1574759306544701443/pho...