4 ms·

Canonical and IBM Are Turning Ubuntu and Fedora into Microsoft Windows

49 points by dxs 3y ago

loloquwowndueo 3y ago
“Canonical keeping up by taking control of LXD (monopoly!)” - it was revealed today that this was motivated by the lead of the LXD project leaving Canonical.
- AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
  Source?
  - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
    https://stgraber.org/2023/07/10/time-to-move-on/ https://stgraber.org/2023/07/10/time-to-move-on/
rollcat 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230710143554/http://techrights.org/2023/07/09/corporate-distros/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230710143554/http://techrights...
- chaosite 3y ago
  https://archive.is/nKH8O https://archive.is/nKH8O
malfist 3y ago
Come on, this is clickbait. Want to discuss particular failings in the governance models of Ubuntu or Fedora? Fine. Let's talk about it. We can even discuss if that specific feature of the governance model is similar to an action Microsoft is/has taken. Vague statements about two different governance models "turning into" a monopoly OS? There's no cogent baseline here to talk about. It's just clickbait and belly aching.
tapoxi 3y ago
Garbage article. The author claims that Flatpak (which is decentralized) is an attempt at centralizing software since Flathub (not controlled by IBM/Red Hat) is popular. Also any telemetry is awful, even telemetry that is open and optional.
- tpush 3y ago
  Opt-out telemetry is indeed awful, no matter how righteous one feels in the cause to get it.
  - tapoxi 3y ago
    I'm going to be controversial and disagree with this. If you're being onboarded to an app, and there's a "enable telemetry?" button and it's clear and checked by default, that's not awful. If your data is sufficiently anonymized, that's the only way you're going to get actual user data, otherwise it's skewed to be those that go out of the way to enable it - in other words, not normal users.
    - tpush 3y ago
      No, data collection ought to always be based on informed consent. A default enabled checkbox that can easily be skipped over does not constitute informed consent. I agree that opt-in telemetry however is useless. Thus, the only ethical and useful option is forced choice; i.e. present the user with two unselected options where a decision between them must be made. This is e.g. how Apple designed its usage data option for the Apple TV, AFAIK. Two unselected options, given equal weight and styling etc.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      By that logic, it should be fine to have a big obvious "enable telemetry?" button that's disabled by default, right? Because otherwise you're just assuming that people will ignore it and leave things on the default setting, and claiming that it's okay to exploit that to enable telemetry.
ComputerGuru 3y ago
Dr Roy on HN. This will be interesting. - - - First thing I did on my Ubuntu install was remove the Firefox snap, add the Mozilla ppa, and install Firefox from there via apt. If Mozilla maintains its own ppa and they do all the hard working of getting everything working, I don’t understand why Canonical has to push a snap option instead. I did give it a try, but only to get obnoxious popups about being forced to restart Firefox every other day for snap to update, and these popups would even bring my monitor out of dpms (and maybe my machine out of sleep?) to inform me of this. But even heeding these prompts, Firefox would still update in the background leaving me unable to open a new tab because IPC broke since the master and slave processes were now running different Firefox versions..
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  This is the same guy who claimed that you should "never, ever, use DuckDuckGo" which was quickly flagged to oblivion for being absurd. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31237822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31237822
- tracker1 3y ago
  FYI, Mozilla also maintains the snap and the flathub images, so that part of the argument doesn't have much traction imho. Can't speak to waking from a sleep state (even just screen off)... that said, having an evergreen browser is pretty important, given how bad 0-day exploits can be. This is also part of why Snaps instead of the repo/ppa for such things as GUI apps. Snap and Flatpak both have advantages and disadvantages over each other, technical and ethical. That said, by using such an abstraction for common applications, it allows for the applications to be released ahead of core OS changes. It allows the delivery of both application features and security updates without risk to the core os running. I know some really hate AppImage/Flatpak/Snaps etc. In the end, it's better in a lot of ways and there are distros for those that don't want to participate. It's still likely the best option for most apps for most people. It allows for developers of software to generate releases that can be consumed from any Linux distro without having to worry about specific downstream distros potentially breaking things, or worse, running unmaintained, years old, versions that are broken.
dhruvmittal 3y ago
If you wanted to make some kind of argument about what's going on with RHEL, I'd hear you out... but Fedora is and remains a community project. While Red Hat certainly has a strong voice in the team meetings, development continues to occur in the open. And while it is true that the Fedora project is considering adding telemetry to Fedora 40, they're openly discussing what kinds of telemetry are ethical before even committing to adding any telemetry. It's a stretch to equate this immediately to Microsoft Windows. > We believe an open source community can ethically collect limited aggregate data on how its software is used without involving big data companies or building creepy tracking profiles that are not in the best interests of users. Users will have the option to disable data upload before any data is sent for the first time. Our service will be operated by Fedora on Fedora infrastructure, and will not depend on Google Analytics or any other controversial third-party services. And in contrast to proprietary software operating systems, you can redirect the data collection to your own private metrics server instead of Fedora’s to see precisely what data is being collected from you, because the server components are open source too.[1] While I'd personally love to see opt-in rather than opt-out telemetry, I believe in the value that telemetry can provide to projects hoping to improve their software/OS offerings. I'm glad to see open discussion on the subject of how to do so ethically. [1] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-request-privacy-preserving-telemetry-for-fedora-workstation-system-wide/85320 https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-request-pr...
- sandworm101 3y ago
  >> While I'd personally love to see opt-in rather than opt-out telemetry I think the vast majority of Linux users would not opt-in to any sort of telemetry. Some would consciously make a determination, but MS/Windows has trained the bulk of us to just say no to such things during any sort of install procedure. I personally would like telemetry to be done fully openly, with a running local text file showing in user-readable format exactly what has been shared in plain English.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > Fedora is and remains a community project. While Red Hat certainly has a strong voice in the team meetings, development continues to occur in the open. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/members/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/members/ lists 7 people. Of these, 6 appear to be Red Hat employees (the other 1 doesn't list employment, so I'll assume it isn't RH). I'll agree that it's developed in the open, just like CentOS Stream, but I struggle to see how Fedora - RHEL's upstream, the continuation of Red Hat Linux, a project whose trademarks are owned by Red Hat, whose leadership is 6/7ths RH employees - is anything but a project by Red Hat.
aeurielesn 3y ago
I'm glad I stopped Ubuntu over a decade ago. I didn't appreciate their "philosophy" nor technical choices.

49 points by dxs 3y ago

“Canonical keeping up by taking control of LXD (monopoly!)” - it was revealed today that this was motivated by the lead of the LXD project leaving Canonical.

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Source?
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  https://stgraber.org/2023/07/10/time-to-move-on/ https://stgraber.org/2023/07/10/time-to-move-on/

rollcat 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230710143554/http://techrights.org/2023/07/09/corporate-distros/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230710143554/http://techrights...

chaosite 3y ago
https://archive.is/nKH8O https://archive.is/nKH8O

malfist 3y ago

Come on, this is clickbait. Want to discuss particular failings in the governance models of Ubuntu or Fedora? Fine. Let's talk about it. We can even discuss if that specific feature of the governance model is similar to an action Microsoft is/has taken. Vague statements about two different governance models "turning into" a monopoly OS? There's no cogent baseline here to talk about. It's just clickbait and belly aching.

tapoxi 3y ago

Garbage article. The author claims that Flatpak (which is decentralized) is an attempt at centralizing software since Flathub (not controlled by IBM/Red Hat) is popular. Also any telemetry is awful, even telemetry that is open and optional.

tpush 3y ago
Opt-out telemetry is indeed awful, no matter how righteous one feels in the cause to get it.
- tapoxi 3y ago
  I'm going to be controversial and disagree with this. If you're being onboarded to an app, and there's a "enable telemetry?" button and it's clear and checked by default, that's not awful. If your data is sufficiently anonymized, that's the only way you're going to get actual user data, otherwise it's skewed to be those that go out of the way to enable it - in other words, not normal users.
  - tpush 3y ago
    No, data collection ought to always be based on informed consent. A default enabled checkbox that can easily be skipped over does not constitute informed consent. I agree that opt-in telemetry however is useless. Thus, the only ethical and useful option is forced choice; i.e. present the user with two unselected options where a decision between them must be made. This is e.g. how Apple designed its usage data option for the Apple TV, AFAIK. Two unselected options, given equal weight and styling etc.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    By that logic, it should be fine to have a big obvious "enable telemetry?" button that's disabled by default, right? Because otherwise you're just assuming that people will ignore it and leave things on the default setting, and claiming that it's okay to exploit that to enable telemetry.

ComputerGuru 3y ago

Dr Roy on HN. This will be interesting. - - - First thing I did on my Ubuntu install was remove the Firefox snap, add the Mozilla ppa, and install Firefox from there via apt. If Mozilla maintains its own ppa and they do all the hard working of getting everything working, I don’t understand why Canonical has to push a snap option instead. I did give it a try, but only to get obnoxious popups about being forced to restart Firefox every other day for snap to update, and these popups would even bring my monitor out of dpms (and maybe my machine out of sleep?) to inform me of this. But even heeding these prompts, Firefox would still update in the background leaving me unable to open a new tab because IPC broke since the master and slave processes were now running different Firefox versions..

gjsman-1000 3y ago
This is the same guy who claimed that you should "never, ever, use DuckDuckGo" which was quickly flagged to oblivion for being absurd. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31237822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31237822
tracker1 3y ago
FYI, Mozilla also maintains the snap and the flathub images, so that part of the argument doesn't have much traction imho. Can't speak to waking from a sleep state (even just screen off)... that said, having an evergreen browser is pretty important, given how bad 0-day exploits can be. This is also part of why Snaps instead of the repo/ppa for such things as GUI apps. Snap and Flatpak both have advantages and disadvantages over each other, technical and ethical. That said, by using such an abstraction for common applications, it allows for the applications to be released ahead of core OS changes. It allows the delivery of both application features and security updates without risk to the core os running. I know some really hate AppImage/Flatpak/Snaps etc. In the end, it's better in a lot of ways and there are distros for those that don't want to participate. It's still likely the best option for most apps for most people. It allows for developers of software to generate releases that can be consumed from any Linux distro without having to worry about specific downstream distros potentially breaking things, or worse, running unmaintained, years old, versions that are broken.

dhruvmittal 3y ago

If you wanted to make some kind of argument about what's going on with RHEL, I'd hear you out... but Fedora is and remains a community project. While Red Hat certainly has a strong voice in the team meetings, development continues to occur in the open. And while it is true that the Fedora project is considering adding telemetry to Fedora 40, they're openly discussing what kinds of telemetry are ethical before even committing to adding any telemetry. It's a stretch to equate this immediately to Microsoft Windows. > We believe an open source community can ethically collect limited aggregate data on how its software is used without involving big data companies or building creepy tracking profiles that are not in the best interests of users. Users will have the option to disable data upload before any data is sent for the first time. Our service will be operated by Fedora on Fedora infrastructure, and will not depend on Google Analytics or any other controversial third-party services. And in contrast to proprietary software operating systems, you can redirect the data collection to your own private metrics server instead of Fedora’s to see precisely what data is being collected from you, because the server components are open source too.[1] While I'd personally love to see opt-in rather than opt-out telemetry, I believe in the value that telemetry can provide to projects hoping to improve their software/OS offerings. I'm glad to see open discussion on the subject of how to do so ethically. [1] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-request-privacy-preserving-telemetry-for-fedora-workstation-system-wide/85320 https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-request-pr...

sandworm101 3y ago
>> While I'd personally love to see opt-in rather than opt-out telemetry I think the vast majority of Linux users would not opt-in to any sort of telemetry. Some would consciously make a determination, but MS/Windows has trained the bulk of us to just say no to such things during any sort of install procedure. I personally would like telemetry to be done fully openly, with a running local text file showing in user-readable format exactly what has been shared in plain English.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> Fedora is and remains a community project. While Red Hat certainly has a strong voice in the team meetings, development continues to occur in the open. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/members/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/members/ lists 7 people. Of these, 6 appear to be Red Hat employees (the other 1 doesn't list employment, so I'll assume it isn't RH). I'll agree that it's developed in the open, just like CentOS Stream, but I struggle to see how Fedora - RHEL's upstream, the continuation of Red Hat Linux, a project whose trademarks are owned by Red Hat, whose leadership is 6/7ths RH employees - is anything but a project by Red Hat.

aeurielesn 3y ago

I'm glad I stopped Ubuntu over a decade ago. I didn't appreciate their "philosophy" nor technical choices.