I have been pretty pissed at Canonical lately for a number of missteps they have made but a few of them do seem like legitimate mistakes. Mark is not really a PR guy and you can tell - a lot of what he has done has just kind of fanned the flames. I don't think I need to remind you, but even in a sarcastic tone, "open source tea party" and "we have root" are inflammatory things to say. I think he addresses some of these problems pretty well in this post, and I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt here. Think about all that he has accomplished and the amount that Ubuntu has helped the Linux community grow.
So kudos to him for having the balls to apologize. I accept that apology, and I think that a lot of people (including myself) have had some venomous things to say about him as well as Canonical which probably weren't fair. So we could probably all back off here and focus on the real issues.
...but...
He's still not talking about the two elephants in the room.
The Unity lens is fundamentally fucked up. It should be opt-in. Period. It's clearly an infringement on users' privacy and totally not in the spirit of libre software or Linux. I can't really trust Canonical - even though they've given us all so much - because of this issue. So long as they don't back down from this I'm going to look at everything they do with a critical and possibly cynical eye... it just clearly looks like they're selling out their users. It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish it didn't have to be this way. I can't really fathom the amount of money Mark has spent on Ubuntu. I don't really know how he can make it work as a business. But the Amazon search in the lens just seems like a morally wrong and short-sighted way to go.
The second issue which we all need to address is Mir. The technical arguments are completely over my head, but I feel like Canonical hasn't fully made the case for why they've decided to fragment the community and do their own thing. This could just be me not understanding what's going on, but pretty much everyone who's developing this stuff seems to be on Wayland's side... why is that (and is that)? It's worth considering, but I feel like Canonical should be engaging the community, although with all the flaming that goes on I can see why they don't. We all want the best free software we can get, but some serious thought needs to be devoted to the ramifications and rationale for having two display servers.
So that's the end of this long rant - let me know what you think.
> It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish it didn't have to be this way.
I think many people confuse the smart scopes as "selling out to Amazon." The lenses integrate a bunch of online sources, some are commercial, some are not. You can try it by hitting the super key and doing something like `wiki:metallica` or `code:discourse` (which searches github for projects, etc.). There's something like 100 sources for information in the dash. Amazon is just one of them.
It's closer to something like Watson for the Mac or the integrated search in Android. Unfortunately people just assume that Ubuntu has "amazon spyware". If you don't like the integrated online search it's one switch to turn it off and Unity will revert to offline-only searches in the Dash.
How many of those sources have a "Buy for $x" button under them? And I don't necessarily want to send the context of searches for content on my own computer over the wire to Canonical's servers (especially these days).
I'm not saying the lens search is an awful thing for everyone. What I'm saying is that they should have the button set to "off" by default, let people know what is available to them, tell them about how it works, and then ask if they want it or not. That's it. That's all it would take.
But even if they do that... isn't it still like the Java installer asking you to install an Ask.com plugin or something? I mean... that's kinda the lowest of the low for free (as in beer) software. Searching Wikipedia and for .git repos online is one thing. Ads are different.
Google Desktop Search did a lot of things right. This was one of them. After(?) the normal EULA text they would pop another one, something like:
READ THIS CAREFULLY, THIS IS NOT THE NORMAL YADDA-YADDA: If you enable Google Desktop Search this and this will happen, which is most likely what you want but you need to be aware of it. Do you want to enable?
> And I don't necessarily want to send the context of searches for content on my own computer over the wire to Canonical's servers (especially these days).
So why are you typing them in the global search tab of the dash? Use the applications tab if you want to search for local applications, or the files tab if you want to search for local file. Super+A and Super+F pulls them up quickly.
Even if you are ok with it being opt-out, I think you would have to acknowledge that it isn't a very good business model. Linux users tend to be very conscious of their privacy rights.
Further even if you think it is ok to be opt-out, and think it is a legitimate way to monetize Linux users, you would acknowledge that Canonical have not handled any part of this story arch very well.
This has done more than enough damage, I think they should abandon it and find another way to fund their development.
They could win back a lot of support and sympathy with a mea culpa moment acknowledging at least one or more of: it wasn't a good idea, it wasn't implemented well, and we didn't handle the criticism properly.
I think the reason Canonical is running into so many problems here is that they are not really targeting your conventional Linux user. They're well and truly after the mainstream, but there are still these old-school Linux users clinging on without realizing that Ubuntu isn't really meant for them.
Exactly. To remain competitive, Ubuntu needs a global search feature much like iOS, Android, Windows, and OS X have. It's what non-technical users are expecting of a modern operating system. Sending the search result to a central server is required to implement this properly by adding voice recognition for mobile devices, and using data correlation and analysis on the server side to return appropriate and relevant results.
With users storing more and more data in the cloud, having a global search box that searches for a particular picture not only locally, but also in my Facebook account, my Ubuntu One, my Flickr, my Dropbox, and my Google+ just makes sense.
The danger with that approach is that Linux is not a mainstream product. It's come on leaps and bounds, and Ubuntu has been hugely responsible for the broadening of desktop linux's appeal, but it's still not mainstream. Windows is mainstream. OSX, some people have heard of, even fewer have tried. Linux is still very much the domain of us geeks, a group that a) is very willing to switch based on principle b) is very capable of switching c) understands how our privacy is being violated.
Canonical COULD get desktop Linux into the mainstream, and stand a better chance than anyone else of doing so, but this is a massive shot in the foot. I give Ubuntu about 6 months of sticking with this policy before they realise they're slowly, irretrievably losing most of their customers.
They've been at it for a lot longer than 6 months. The shopping lens was introduced a year ago. There was also the Unity controversy before that. Debian has never particularly liked them for various reasons.
I'd argue that if they are not going for the mainstream consumers (or enterprise), they might as well just close the company. For the reasons you mentioned, Linux users are quite high-maintenance and difficult to please. Evidence of this is how much Linux users tend to flame each other. I don't think Canonical really wants those extremely principled, very privacy-sensitive Linux geeks as customers. They would be behaving very differently to the criticism if they did.
Would you rather that Ubuntu go out of business than try to make money through the Amazon feature? Do you use Ubuntu? If so, why do you still use it if you feel so strongly against it? If not, why do you care so much about this? I'm a very happy Ubuntu user of many years, and I'd like to see Canonical be a successful business.
Morally wrong would be if they were trying to hold my files for ransom, or produce buggy software to sell me upgrades. They're just making it more convenient for me to buy stuff if I want to. On the spectrum of things that are morally wrong, this is so far from being something to get really upset about.
How much money does Amazon pay Canonical per month for basically random meaningless search terms from an unsegmented user base? I'd really like to know.
PS: I have used Ubuntu on desktop and I have made modest (OEM price of Windows 7) donations.
Amazon's standard affiliate rates range from 4% (less than 7 sales/month) to as high as 8.5% (3131+ sales/month). According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)#Insta...) Ubuntu had ~20MM users as of 2011. Good estimates of conversion rate and average sale price would be tricky to come up with, but let's just pretend they're 0.1% and $50 respectively. That would see Canonical bringing in about $1MM annually from this feature.
> I can't really trust Canonical - even though they've given us all so much
What did they give us exactly? Unity? Upstart? I'm laughing.
It's really interesting how Canonical managed to promote Ubuntu. In the beginning, Ubuntu had nothing Debian didn't have. Nothing at all. It was just Debian with a brown theme. They claimed it was the most user friendly Linux distribution, and a lot of novices believed them not knowing better. Fake it 'till you make it.
Ubuntu's success comes from the free CDs. That was Mark's single good decision, but what a decision that was.
Ubuntu advanced desktop Linux in terms of ease of installation, drivers and slickness bar a time when Debian seemed to be stagnating.
I was a Debian user for years, but around 2005-6 I decided to change my main system to Ubuntu. At the time, it had been years since stable Debian had been updated and I was finding it laborious to update the software manually. Meanwhile, Debian unstable was more up to date with the latest KDE, gnome, etc but was ... unstable. Ubuntu did a lot of work well in terms of final fit and polish to make Debian more user friendly. While I have long been most at home glunking around in a shell, I appreciated this there's a limit to how much time I can spend compiling KDE and upgrading libc.
So kudos to him for having the balls to apologize. I accept that apology, and I think that a lot of people (including myself) have had some venomous things to say about him as well as Canonical which probably weren't fair. So we could probably all back off here and focus on the real issues.
...but...
He's still not talking about the two elephants in the room.
The Unity lens is fundamentally fucked up. It should be opt-in. Period. It's clearly an infringement on users' privacy and totally not in the spirit of libre software or Linux. I can't really trust Canonical - even though they've given us all so much - because of this issue. So long as they don't back down from this I'm going to look at everything they do with a critical and possibly cynical eye... it just clearly looks like they're selling out their users. It is really just sad to see them selling out to Amazon like this, and I wish it didn't have to be this way. I can't really fathom the amount of money Mark has spent on Ubuntu. I don't really know how he can make it work as a business. But the Amazon search in the lens just seems like a morally wrong and short-sighted way to go.
The second issue which we all need to address is Mir. The technical arguments are completely over my head, but I feel like Canonical hasn't fully made the case for why they've decided to fragment the community and do their own thing. This could just be me not understanding what's going on, but pretty much everyone who's developing this stuff seems to be on Wayland's side... why is that (and is that)? It's worth considering, but I feel like Canonical should be engaging the community, although with all the flaming that goes on I can see why they don't. We all want the best free software we can get, but some serious thought needs to be devoted to the ramifications and rationale for having two display servers.
So that's the end of this long rant - let me know what you think.