[uylug-varios] On Richard Stallman and Ubuntu

[Federico Kouyoumdjian]

Otro punto de vista:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/07/on-richard-stallman-and-ubuntu/

On Richard Stallman and Ubuntu

by jono on December 7, 2012 in Community, Desktop, Planet Ubuntu, Ubuntu

This is a personal post and does not neccessarily represent the views of 
Canonical or the Ubuntu community.

Today Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project and Free Software 
Foundation wrote a critical post accusing Ubuntu of shipping spyware 
(which is referring to the online search capabilities of the Ubuntu dash).

He goes on to suggest “in your Software Freedom Day events, in your 
FLISOL events, don’t install or recommend Ubuntu. Instead, tell people 
that Ubuntu is shunned for spying.“.

This is FUD.

When controvosies such as this kick off from time to time about 
Canonical and/or Ubuntu, my approach has never been to try and convince 
our critics that they are wrong. My goal is not to turn the unbelievers 
into worshippers at the church of Ubuntu. My only goal has been to 
ensure that everyone who participates in the debate trades in facts and 
not in misinformation and FUD; there is enough misinformation and FUD on 
the Internet without us all adding to it. :-)

If someone has an accurate set of facts and accurately respresents the 
topic but is critical about the position…no problem. We can then engage 
in respectful, accurate debate that will likely enrich all perspectives 
and ultimately result in better software.

The goal of the dash in Ubuntu has always been to provide a central 
place in which you can search and find things that are interesting and 
relavent to you; it is designed to be at the center of your computing 
experience. Now, this is a big goal, and we are only part-way along the 
way to achieving it.

Today it is not perfect – we need to improve the accuracy of the 
results, present the data more effectively, and continue to expand the 
coverage and capabilities of the data in dash searches. With each new 
release of Ubuntu we get awesome feedback from our community and users 
and we strive to refine and iterate on all of these areas so that 
subsequent releases offer a more and more compelling experience, freely 
available and sharable for all.

Naturally, privacy is critically important to us in doing this work. In 
the eight year history of Ubuntu and Canonical we have always put 
privacy forward as a high priority across the many, many different 
websites, services, and software that forms the Ubuntu platform and 
community.

The challenge of course is that privacy is a deeply personal thing and 
the way in which you define your privacy expectations will likely 
radically differ from each of your friends, and vice-versa.

With this in mind, just because someone may have differing views to mine 
on the implementation of privacy in software doesn’t mean they are 
wrong. Likewise, just because my views may differ to theirs doesn’t mean 
I am wrong. We are all different and we all manage our information and 
our expectations around information sharing in different ways.

Just look at Facebook; the privacy debates there have been raging on for 
years and have encompassed many different views and perspectives ranging 
from “I want to control every detail of my privacy in Facebook” to “I 
don’t care, if it is on the Internet, I don’t care who sees it”, and 
everything in-between.

We want Ubuntu to be a safe, predictable, and pleasurable platform for 
everyone, irrespective of their personal views on privacy, but we also 
respect that there will be some folks who don’t feel we are doing enough 
to represent their particular personal privacy needs.

When we implemented the Amazon search results feature we didn’t get it 
100% right with the first cut in the development release of Ubuntu, but 
that is how we build Ubuntu; we add software to our development branch 
and iterate on it in response to feedback and bugs. We did exactly this 
with these functional and privacy concerns…responding and implementing 
many of the requirements our community felt were important. We will 
continue to make these improvements in the future in much the same way.

Now, some of you may share Richard’s concerns over some aspects of this 
feature, and as I mentioned earlier, I am not here to convince you 
otherwise. Richard has every right to share his views on privacy, and 
who am I to tell him or you that he is/you are wrong?

What concerns me more is the FUD in his post. Statements such as:

     In your Software Freedom Day events, in your FLISOL events, don’t 
install or recommend Ubuntu. Instead, tell people that Ubuntu is shunned 
for spying.

…and

     Any excuse Canonical offers is inadequate; even if it used all the 
money it gets from Amazon to develop free software, that can hardly 
overcome what free software will lose if it ceases to offer an effective 
way to avoid abuse of the users.

These statements simply generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about 
Ubuntu; a project that has a long history of bringing Free Software to 
millions of users around the world with an open community and governance.

But then again, this is not particularly surprising from Richard.

I have tremendous respect for Richard and his fantastic work in laying 
the foundations for the Free Software and Open Source world that we have 
today, but I think he is short-sighted at times. His views on software 
projects are pretty binary: either a strict set of ethics (defined by 
him) are observed, or it should be shunned.

The challenge here is that freedom is also a deeply personal thing.

I believe that freedom is far more than simply freedom of source code or 
a specific policy around privacy. When I got involved in the Free 
Software community 14 years ago my passion from then onwards was not 
driven by creating awesome Free Software code, it was more about 
creating awesome Free Software experiences that open up technology, 
education, creativity and collaboration to everyone. Free Software code 
is simply one mechanic in how we deliver these experiences; it is not 
the be all and end all of what we do.

A completely free set of source code that implements a system that is 
difficult to use, lacks the features that users want, is not competitive 
with proprietary competitors, and/or does not offer a desirable and 
delightful experience is not going to bring Free Software to the wider 
world. It may bring Free Software to a passionate collection of 
enthusiasts (as we saw back in the early days of Linux), but in my mind 
true freedom is software that is not just available to all but usable by 
all, even those who are not enthusiasts.

Just look at the success of Apple. General consumers have voted with 
their feet, and people want beautiful, desirable products that let them 
do useful and fun things with their friends, families and colleagues. 
There is absolutely no reason why we can’t achieve this with Free Software.

In Ubuntu we want to build a platform that is even more beautiful, 
elegant and delightful than Apple, but is infused with the Free Software 
values that empower that technology, education, creativity and 
collaboration in everyone.

But unfortunately, as far as Richard is concerned, if Ubuntu doesn’t 
meet his specific requirements around privacy or Free Software, 
irrespective that it has brought Free Software to millions of users and 
thousands of organizations, and despite the fact that you might not 
share his viewpoint, you should shun it.

This just seems a bit childish to me.

Let’s turn the tables around. Do I agree with everything the Free 
Software Foundation does? Not at all, but I do think their general body 
of work is fantastic, worthwhile, and provides an important and valuable 
service, and I would never want to suggest you should boycott them if 
you disagree with one part of what they do. Quite the opposite, I would 
encourage you to see their website, donate, and consider joining them as 
they provide a valuable piece of the wider Free Software ecosystem, in 
much the same way Ubuntu provides another piece. Let’s work together, 
not against each other.