Ubuntu's New Firefox Is Watching You 330
sukotto writes "Ubuntu recently released an unannounced and experimental 'multisearch' extension to Firefox alpha 3, apparently in an effort to improve the default behavior of new tabs and of search. In a response to one of the initial bug reports the maintainers mentioned that the extension's other purposes were 'collecting the usage data' and 'generating revenue.' Since this extension installs by itself and offers no warning about potential privacy violations, quite a few people (myself included) feel pretty unhappy. The only way to opt out is to disable the extension manually via Tools > Add-ons." Most posters to this Ubuntu forum thread are not happy about multisearch.
Linux Mint had this already... (Score:4, Interesting)
I installed Linux Mint about a month ago looking for a new Linux distribution to put on a cheap laptop I had just gotten. All the search pages, no matter where I searched, were coming up branded "Linux Mint". Didn't take too long for me to get annoyed at this, especially when I found out there was no way whatsoever to remove the addon from Firefox. I ended up downloading the mozilla.com distributed package and overwriting the symlinks by hand. Mint is based on Ubuntu, but my 9.04 installs don't have this in there. I guess this is one "innovation" that made it back up the food chain. Personally embarassing for me, since I had just finished recommending Linux Mint to several friends, aquaintances, and customers.
Re:Big projects need funding (Score:2, Interesting)
I can deal with advertising and such. Spying on me is something completely different.
Splatter ads all over my screen and I'll get annoyed but continue on. You start watching what I do, log what web sites I visit, analyze who I'm talking to, and other invasion of privacy stuff and I'll get angry. Angry enough to stop using whatever shit you're peddling.
Yes I know Google does this but that's a single external point that I can watch out for. I can choose to block their ads/tracking stuff or use a proxy. Integrating spying into the software I use is an invasive act which is harder to recognize and defend against. That's the kind of stuff that pisses me off.
i knew it was coming (Score:3, Interesting)
Another end for Ubuntu... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Browsers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And so it begins... (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Could everyone please RTFA? (Score:2, Interesting)
Quoting from the linked bug report:
"We've made some changes in the Alpha 3 version of Firefox related to how and where search queries are processed. We've introduced the changes at this time in an experimental vein in order to explore and understand the user experience and usage patterns. We plan to use this experimental code at least until Alpha 4.
Note that we did not necessarily foresee Multisearch as code that we would ship in a stable release. Whatever actions we take in response to the information and feedback will depend on the information and feedback that we collect from this effort."
This is a test feature directed at exploring ways of improving user experience, nobody is spying on anyone. Maybe there should have been a better P.R.strategy, like communicating this experiment on advance, and requesting feedback. That would avoid some moron misinterpreting the whole thing. Now can we all go back to doing useful stuff?
I went the opposite way (Score:1, Interesting)
Straight through from RH 7.1 to FC 12 then I had finally had enough with the sound and video display issues that never really get fixed, just get more complicated and more buggy with every new release. RH and Fedora have made it perfectly clear that desktop linux is something they just don't care about, they are "enterprise" and "server" oriented, even though they "offer" desktop apps. Some update left me with a totally blank unresponsive screen and I went ENOUGH! I've googled and sweated all the little bugs of the day I want to with them. Every release the stupid hoop jumping to get correct resolution or to get any sound whatsoever out of speakers (this is 2009, please!), and it might work for a week, then it goes down again with another bad update, back and forth, then back to a new release and do it all over again, except this time with a thousand more new packages no one really wants or uses to help mess things up.
Had the latest ubuntu disk kicking around, re checked it, it worked running it live on my hardware, looked perfect, it installed perfectly fine, gave me the option to do the card manufacturer's blob drivers, took a chance, they worked fine (I actually do want the screen to work, sick of half assed screens), sound worked perfectly fine with no pulse audio fuckups, etc. Got all my media to play and work completely painlessly without having to go look up this weeks new and improved way to do that, everything I want to view or listen to without a ton of copy pasting cryptic commands that only half work half the time for half the people if you have ever followed the fedora forums a lot. They have a few volunteer gurus there who really do try hard, but if you don't have near the same exact hardware they have, good freekin luck! Ubuntu, just nails more hardware well it seems, more and different rigs will work fine out of the box. Same gnome desktop, two completely different results, so it has to be how much they care and quality control and ubuntu is just winning, little mistakes or not.
And it's almost hard for me to say that, because I was such a fan for a long time of red hat and then fedora, but got to call it like I see it now, downhill bad last few years with the RPM boys.
So far, so good three months now with ubuntu. In my view, ubuntu is winning on the desktop because they actually do care about the home user and the desktop, in fact, I wish Red Hat and Fedora would just stop pretending to even bother with home users and the desktop, it would actually help them focus resources, and nothing wrong with fixating on the enterprise and the server, just SAY THAT OFFICIALLY AND STOP PRETENDING YOU OFFER A HOME USER OR DESKTOP VERSION so people aren't faked out what they are getting.. Heck, even on the fedora forums the big names there will tell people over and over again (generally speaking) that the fedora devs don't bother reading or replying or helping there much at all if even ever, they stick to those *quaint* 1980s stupid mailing lists so they can feel old school and leet or something. For an alleged "community" distro the main guys don't participate with the users? huh? And you can find that quoted there dozens of times on the semi official not really official forums. If that ain't a clue that they really don't give a shit about the desktop (and it shows) I don't know what is. In fact, this ubuntu has been so painless, I haven't had the need to go try and fix anything, never one time had to go lookup how to fix something, haven't even bothered to even look at the forums much at all, just for fun, but they seem way less frantic with bad fixes just glancing at it, and I so far could have gotten by completely ignoring the forums there, haven't needed them. With fedora, seems almost every update breaks something else. It just got intolerable for me, I couldn't excuse it anymore.
So, my anecdotal cancels yours I guess, unless you have some real hard numbers to show us.
yup, it's a browser world (Score:3, Interesting)
(The other 10% I enjoy a better console and alternate between loving and hating Linux packaging.)
Re:Outrage calibration (Score:3, Interesting)
Segmentation fault
Re:The Real Issue (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that Ubuntu is shipping a modified version of Firefox instead of the default Firefox shipped by Mozilla.
No it's not. Patches and plugins are fine if they make a positive impact or at least do not make a negative impact and are easily removed. Negative features such as this are not very tolerable regardless of how easy it is to remove.
They don't want the named changed to Shiretoko or IceWeasel.
Shiretoko is Mozilla's own codename for Firefox 3.5. You don't get accuse Slashdot (and every other Linux-topic webpage on the Internet) of changing Ubuntu 9.04's name to "Jaunty", do you?
Some do prefer the name change. When I use Ubuntu I install abrowser, which strips out Mozilla's branding. It's much better for the distributions to make changes to vanilla Firefox and change the name (because Mozilla insists) over not making any changes.
They don't want the icons changed.
It's a one-time adjustment. "Click that one, Grandma. The one that says '$FOOBAR Web Browser'." They needed to do it when switching from IE anyways. If they could do it once they can do it again.
They don't want weird extensions that change behaviour.
Define 'weird'. ABP changes behavior, but I seriously doubt anybody (ad providers excluded) would complain if it were installed. I never found Ubuntu's modifications very offensive in how they changed it (They put "Ubuntu Package Search" as an engine in the search bar? How dare they!).
They also don't want updates to come from Ubuntu repositories, as they do for every other package. They want the newest version of Firefox from Mozilla at the exact moment that Mozilla ships it.
Since when do you speak for the general population? It seems that that is exactly the inverse of what they want. They don't want to deal with half a dozen individual self-updating programs. They want the programs to leave them alone. Seriously, have you ever done tech support for someone that had the latest patches of anything other than maybe commercial games? Anybody that understands enough to download Firefox from Mozilla is capable of coping with a distribution's unique name for a Firefox build.
I understand the reasoning behind Ubuntu and Debian's policies, but I think it is obvious that Firefox trumps Ubuntu.
I know Debian's policies [wikipedia.org] and how they apply to Firefox [wikipedia.org], but what do you think Ubuntu's are? AFAIK, Ubuntu has no policy governing this.
You earlier referred to Firefox being called "Shiretoko". To my knowledge, no distribution calls it that for their default Firefox. I do know, however, that is what Ubuntu is calling 3.5 at the moment. But not out of pressure from ideals. Rather, they call it that because sudo apt-get install firefox will install 3.0.x. They call it Shiretoko because, as I noted earlier, that's what Mozilla calls it; and because the name "Firefox" is already being used by 3.0. That will change when they get around to making 3.5 the default.
They should make a special exception for it.
Unacceptable. An exception means that either Debian doesn't make security patches without getting approval from Mozilla. This puts Debian's security entirely in Mozilla's hands. Their current version, Lenny (and Squeeze, and Sid) is using the 3.0.x branch. It will remain there for the next two years. Meanwhile, Mozilla has moved on to the 3.5.x branch and intends to move on to 3.6.x this fall and 3.7.x in the spring. They aren't going to be putting much support into 3.0.x two years down the road.