this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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AFAIK the "terminal ads" were suggesting Ubuntu Pro when using the package management. It's very far away from actual ads. Just the free version suggesting the paid one. Not ad space sold to third parties.
You've read it here, folks. Microsoft just needs to promote Xbox deals and such, then it's not an ad space sold to third parties. (Either that or you're holding Canonical to a different standard than Microsoft.)
It would be more like MS selling extended support, which is fair and relevant to something being on the update page.
Would it be bad if a community driven distro had a donations link once a year in the package manager? Not really. A bit annoying, but we still live in a world where they need money too.
The Ubuntu paid ad doesn't show just in the updater either. Seems like double standard allowing Canonical advertising their paid product every time the terminal is opened and Microsoft would be only fine to be allowed to advertise paid updates in the updater.
I'm a packager of a small but public repository. Over the years some of the packages were actually picked up by the upstream distribution (minor stuff to scratch my own itch, nothing noteworthy, IMO, but still). I was never offered a few cents of whatever donations came in. Such money goes to the distribution leaders, not the actual community and even less so to the actual upstream software developers. If anything, the upstream software developers should get the money, not a downstream distribution where most of the work is automated anyway and yet replacing bookmarks in the default browser to customized ones for the distribution is common practice. Back when people still bought MP3 music, Canonical replaced the affiliate IDs for MP3 music stores to funnel money off upstream developers into their own pockets.
Windows 10 started out as a free upgrade to Win7 and Win8 users (at least the Home variant, not sure about Pro and higher). Since then Win11 has also been a free upgrade. Do we live in a world where Windows developers need to make money from their product then?
So how are people going to know who you are and how to support you? First time I'm hearing from you. Leave a note somewhere. Your altruism is appreciated, but you do need to eat too! Don't passively let capitalism take advantage of you. You don't need to extend your values to corporate.
Money still runs the world. Windows or FOSS devs. I wish things were different, but you are wasting your political support on something that is not a big deal.
Ubuntu Pro is hardly an ad and not comparable to candy crush. Letting people know of a service to get more support is within scope (which is a target for enterprise anyway). To be clear there are better things to criticize about Canonical.
I do have a regular job. I'm doing fine. I don't want or need money donated to Linux distributions. Updating a few packages is hardly any work at all because the majority of tasks is automated (as I said: my repo is small and for my own use. I don't advertise its existence but I also don't hide it either). Actually developing software is. I don't want distributors nagging users for money to then put in their pockets. Distributors can promote pledge drives to fund hosting on their website.
Yes, it is.
Cool, so Microsoft's "Back up to OneDrive" once per month and "Get more OneDrive storage" don't count then...
Look my you ran an update and the update program is letting you know how you can get extended support if you needed. It is with in the scope of the activity in a way that Candy Crush and One Drive are not. If Kden live was more explicit about being part of the KDE universe I don't think there is harm to that either. Ubuntu pro is not malicious or vendor locking (in its current state). What is the big deal that you spend so much energy here? Letting people know how to get 12 years of support instead of just the standard 5? There is a cost to doing that and ensuring quality. The discussion on the distribution paying upstream is important, but kind of a separate matter (and yes they could be doing more).
This is supposed to be for a company that has multiple machines and needs security back ported. Any regular desktop user can just opt out. Real question, what changes do you want to see to make things better? Like we do need to improve communication on how to support FOSS in general. I am not a particularly good programmer, so don't commit bug fixes. I live in the shit hole US South and 50% below median for the state, so my money contributions are never that high. If we are allergic to Ubuntu Pro or
x packages are looking for funding.innpm, how do we really address anything? I get that ads are very invasive, but i think you are picking the least impressive hill to die on here.Yeah, I don't get extreme criticism against any monetization. Isn't Ubuntu Pro basically paid version of ubuntu?
For now...
And for most people, Ubuntu Pro is free in practice (since most folks are unlikely to have more than 5 machines that need the features Pro provides).