[ale] Canonical makes Apple look so good...

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Tue, 2011-03-08 at 17:07 -0500, Jim Kinney wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> > What Canonical is doing is ethically wrong and is the level of crap I'd
> > expect to see from a politician, not someone who claims to care about
> > the free software ecosystem(s).
> 
> I think you hit the nail on the head. Cannonical is NOT about the free
> software ecosystem. Cannonical is as much of a corporate leech as
> Oracle.
> 
> They have always been that way.

Perhaps I'm just young, dumb, and naïve; I've seen them as pretty stupid
sometimes, I've certainly noted their lack of (direct) upstream
contributions (though they do seem to go out of their way to "launder"
them through Debian at times), but up until now I've never seen them as
a truly harmful entity.

Now I'm convinced that they need to be ejected from our universe, though
I suppose that's as useless a statement as any.  It's not like I have
the power to effect that change.  That's probably a good thing.

> SuSE used to distribute their distro with a closed-source installer.
> Thus I quit even tinkering with their stuff. They saw the light,
> opened the code and make themselves some serious geek cred hacking
> video drivers for X. That was an (almost) excusable infraction.
> 
> But to change the affiliate code on software you get to use for free
> so the developers get cut out of a few nickles to feed their
> caffeine/music habits shows a serious (in my mind) lack of ethics.

If only it was to feed their caffeine and music habits.  They were
donating it all to GNOME.  Nevermind that: it's just as wrong either
way.

I've never really thought that there would ever be a time where I would
think of a license revocation clause as a good thing, but I'm starting
to think that it would be.  I know that if I were the people behind
Banshee, I'd be absolutely livid.  Hell, I'm livid as it is.

Of course, they have no grounds to sue, they have no method by which to
revoke the license to Canonical, and they have no means by which to get
their (well-deserved!) money without convincing everyone to install
their own packaged version.  Leaves a nasty, nasty taste in my mouth.
Just like politicians do.  Nasty.

Ubuntu 11.04: The Nasty Nabber.

	--- Mike