Comment 441 for bug 269656

Revision history for this message
Dragonlord (dreamsareimmortal) wrote :

Mark, I do think that Chip Bennett has a strong point. In this spirit, the next step would be mp3 codecs already installed, with a notification that you can uninstall them if you don't agree with the terms of use. After that, maybe full proprietary pieces of software, again, with the option to remove them. An Ubuntu installation should come with the default configuration having only free software and services enabled. If the user wants, they can enable/install non-free stuff afterwards. I understand that these services have to do with google, and are probably a necessity for Mozilla (and subsequently Canonical?) to get funds from Google, but as others have said, it's a character moment. What if Microsoft came and made you an offer to include MSN messenger with Ubuntu for a good amount of money, with a notification the first time you run it that if you don't agree to the terms of use you must uninstall it. It's not the same, but it's a similar situation; speaking of brand recognition, MSN Live! messenger is ten times bigger than Mozilla Firefox. It would be good for the new users to find such a familiar program installed with Ubuntu, and there would be the option to remove it, but is this your vision for the biggest GNU/Linux distribution? Once you accept the Firefox situation, where will it stop and by what logic? Sure, firefox's code is open source and MSN's isn't, but you're not allowed to change firefox's code one byte without changing its name and logo, so one could argue if it's such a huge difference on a practical level. And yes, we're talking about a part of firefox now, whereas with MSN it would be the whole program, but it's a thin line. Please, let's not get into the discussion whether it's a good example or why it is different, I know it's different, but at the same time there are significant similarities and that's where I'm focusing. Software is either completely free, or it's non-free. The right thing to do is have these services disabled, and then, when you first open Firefox, show a simple text saying why browsing will not be same from phishing without those services enabled, with a link to the user terms you have to accept and a button that will do it for you on the fly, not confusing users with Edit>Preferences etc. I bet you that almost all users will enable them for security anyway, so any financial losses will not be significant, and it's the only way to keep the Ubuntu promise and be respectful to the community. Mozilla seem to have made a huge step in the right direction and what I'm proposing isn't that far from their solution, but it's significant to take that extra step so that ubuntu stays true to its ideas and goals. I hope it works out.