Richard Stallman accused Ubuntu of being a "spyware"

Richard dstallman, chairman of the Free Software Foundation and father of open-source software, recently accused Canonical of the Linux operating system Ubuntu as & ldquo; spyware & rdquo; Because Canonical added the Amzon search function in Ubuntu12.10. Is this directive true? Friends who have used Windows 8 may have used its WindowsUI (formerly called MetroUI) search application. In fact, this mechanism has already been used in Ubunt

Richard Stallman, chairman of the Free Software Foundation and father of open-source software, recently accused Canonical of Linux operating system Ubuntu as "spyware" because Canonical added Amzon's search function in Ubuntu 12.10. Is this directive true?

Anyone who has used Windows 8 may have used its Windows UI (formerly known as Metro UI) to search applications. In fact, this mechanism has already appeared on Ubuntu. Users can search for any content on the Internet or in the system in a uniform way in the search bar, but now they have added new features so that users can search for Amzon content at the same time. Mark Shuttleworth, chief executive of Canonical, explained that Canonical only integrates the search results of Amzon. If a user buys Amazon products through Ubuntu search, Canonical will get some revenue.

Stallman said the focus of the problem is that Canonical collects personal user information, but the Shuttleworth reply means that Canonical automatically anonymizes user logs to provide a better search experience. If you feel uneasy, you can turn off options related to the Amzon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter services on your own. Many open-source people agree that Amzon's search results are related to shopping, and the purpose of integration is obviously for economic benefits. But there will be no free lunch in the world. Canonical, as an enterprise, needs to have income. There are two types of income: first, collection from the user's house, and second, collection from advertisers. Microsoft took the first path, while Canonical only wanted another path.

The Stallman supporter may ask: why is this not done by Fedora and openSEUSE? It is easy because Red Hat and Novell, two enterprises that support the two Linux versions, have another paid enterprise version as the source of revenue. In the future, if Ubuntu is like Fedora and openSEUSE, it will need to be divided into "open-source" and "paid" versions, and the paid version will provide financial support to the "open-source version, in order to completely calm the storm.

As a pioneer in open-source software, I respect Richard Stallman very much, but even if he is a "teacher", it does not mean that we accept all what he says. Open-source technology is not the majority in the IT industry. Everyone should be considerate of the positions of different groups. Only when everyone works together can open-source technology blossom.