Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? [LWN.net]

Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

Posted Dec 8, 2012 3:02 UTC (Sat) by imgx64 (guest, #78590)
In reply to: Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? by pboddie
Parent article: Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

> In fact, Ubuntu 12.10 already gives hints about uninstalled programs at the command line (and here was I thinking that the "spoof" bug reports about this controversy were joking about some future feature), but this might well be based on a locally installed index inverted over the dpkg -S data, but I foresee a time when it too queries some "App Store" or other to be more "helpful".

You mean this: http://packages.debian.org/stable/main/command-not-found ?

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Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

Posted Dec 8, 2012 5:39 UTC (Sat) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]

Yes, this is another example, and guess what -- it is opt-in in Debian, and yes, opt-out in Ubuntu.

Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

Posted Dec 8, 2012 5:42 UTC (Sat) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]

I wish I wasn't in such a hurry to reply..

As it stands, there's no effective privacy-related difference between Debian and Ubuntu here. It seems.

Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

Posted Dec 11, 2012 13:42 UTC (Tue) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

In my opinion, opt-in v.s. opt-out is privacy related, and is quite effective.

command-not-found

Posted Dec 8, 2012 18:22 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

... and similar software is included in Fedora, again by default in newer versions. You can uninstall the package, or if it bothers you but not other users on the same machine you can tell bash not to run the handler.

Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

Posted Dec 9, 2012 11:04 UTC (Sun) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]

For now, the system use the local indexes of apt/yum/whatever to tell you where is the package you tried to use. There is so far no privacy issue, as this doesn't leave your computer.