So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
On a pristine F21 install using Gnome, when first launching Firefox, users are presented with a number of tiles, depending on screen size. One of those is a so-called "sponsored" tile chosen from a range of available advertisements (e.g. for booking.com, there's also one for the Snowden movie), apparently depending on geographical location.
When this "feature" got originally announced[1], there was a discussion on -devel if this kind of stuff is really appropriate for Fedora.
Some time later Mozilla seemed to have canceled the feature, quoting "That’s not going to happen. That’s not who we are at Mozilla." as one of the reasons[2].
Apparently, they (again) reconsidered, pushing the feature to nightlies a few months ago. Well, it now hit the stable branch and, therefore, Fedora.
This is how Mozilla pitches the feature to advertisers[3]:
To support ad personalization, Mozilla created an internal data system that aggregates user information while stripping out personally identifiable information. Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins. Its advertising partners are also privy to that data.
Personally, I don't think that showing advertisements on the free software desktop is appropriate. Our users are supposed to be able to fully trust our software. That's one of our most-often touted strenghts. I don't think the ability to "track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins" is something that is compatible with that, regardless of this data being tied to "personally identifiable information" or not.
Firefox's behaviour is probably nothing extraordinary on the other platforms Mozilla is targeting. Compared to the prevalent attitude of proprietary vendors, especially on mobile, it doesn't sound that bad anymore. I don't think that's a suitable scale for Fedora, though.
From a user perspective, it's not that hard to disable the feature. Upon
first seeing that page a tooltip is shown to hint at the possibility. Users can choose between three modes, "Enhanced", "Classic" and "Blank". Contrary to what is stated in the Mozilla kb[4], the only one that actually disables the ads is "Blank", which is equal to setting the new tab page to about:blank.
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformatio... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/ [3] http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/mozilla-finally-releases-its-b... [4] https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_enhanced-tiles
Hello Free Software Friends,
I want to encourage the Fedora Community to think carefully about making a switch to another browser as the default in Fedora. I would not get hung up on these tiles (Ads) too much and remember they are necessary in order for Mozilla to continue building Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Firefox OS and supporting the very literally hundreds of movements and thousands of events it does each year.
But that all aside I hope you will weigh whether the alternatives will provider your users any better of an experience in terms of Stability, Performance, Privacy or Trust.
I think it will be difficult to find an alternative that offers what Firefox does to your users and frankly I think you will have a fair amount of users that will be upset that you switched the default on them. Sure they can still install Firefox but the fact is Fedora users come to expect Firefox to be the default much like they expect Gnome to be the default. (Also remember there are very likely thousands of Mozilla Contributors that use Fedora)
Whatever your decision have a good release cycle and keep on building that awesome free software!
-- Benjamin Kerensa http://benjaminkerensa.com
On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 12:11:04AM -0800, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
I want to encourage the Fedora Community to think carefully about making a switch to another browser as the default in Fedora. I would not get hung up on these tiles (Ads) too much and remember they are necessary in order for Mozilla to continue building Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Firefox OS and supporting the very literally hundreds of movements and thousands of events it does each year.
Hi Benjamin. This seems like as good a place as any to jump in on this topic. I think that there are three separate concerns here:
1. Privacy and Tracking =======================
This is a big concern of many of our contributors and users, and it's something that we don't have a clear policy on. I've seen some degree of speculation over Mozilla's practices here; people should read https://wiki.mozilla.org/Tiles/Data_Collection, which will hopefully clear up some of the concerns. (I'm unsure, though, of the significance of "tile ID and destination" vs "URL" from a user point of view. Also, use of the jargon word "frecency" does not help clarity.)
On the one hand, though, we live in a world of the Web. _Especially_ for a web browser, I do not see much difference between the "enhanced" new tab page, which happens to be local with remote content, and having that page be https://start.mozilla.org/, which runs Google Analytics and Optimizely beacons and could presumably start running advertising at any time.
On the other hand, I do not like the idea of Fedora having a jumble of privacy options one must track down and opt out of in various applications. This doesn't seem in line with our vision statement, which includes "people control their content and devices". Mozilla seems to have thought this through considerably and the practices seem much better than _most_, but I'm not sure we want to get Fedora into the business of reviewing and approving these for every case.
2. Implication of Endorsement of Fedora or by Fedora ===================================================
When someone downloads Firefox independently from the operating system, and discovers that it is ad-supported software, the relationship is fairly clear. However, Firefox is, as you note, our default and centerpiece web browser. Although Firefox obviously has a strong brand of its own, the details of the relationship isn't necessarily clear.
A reasonable person could see the tiles marked "sponsored" and assume that Fedora is involved in the sponsorhip relationship in some way — that we endorse the links, products, or services; or that we are receiving some amount of funding from them.
This is particularly problematic for a project like Fedora, where our mission has a significant component of cultural impact. We don't want to be seen as endorsing viewpoints which do not align with our foundations. (And yes, this is also a potential problem with the various links to websites contained in GNOME Software appstream from https://github.com/hughsie/fedora-appstream/tree/master/appstream-extra.)
3. Dislike of Advertising in General ====================================
When a company's source of revenue is advertising, its users inevitably become its _product_, rather than the people the company serves. I appreciate that Mozilla is making these moves in order to reduce dependency on a company where advertising and tracking _is_ the primary income stream. It's a complicated issue and I know Mozilla has struggled with it and will continue to.
I guess I don't have much more to say about this aspect except: there it is, and that it is separate from the other two.
On 11/19/2014 09:11 AM, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
Hello Free Software Friends,
I want to encourage the Fedora Community to think carefully about making a switch to another browser as the default in Fedora. I would not get hung up on these tiles (Ads) too much and remember they are necessary in order for Mozilla to continue building Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Firefox OS and supporting the very literally hundreds of movements and thousands of events it does each year.
But that all aside I hope you will weigh whether the alternatives will provider your users any better of an experience in terms of Stability, Performance, Privacy or Trust.
I think it will be difficult to find an alternative that offers what Firefox does to your users and frankly I think you will have a fair amount of users that will be upset that you switched the default on them. Sure they can still install Firefox but the fact is Fedora users come to expect Firefox to be the default much like they expect Gnome to be the default. (Also remember there are very likely thousands of Mozilla Contributors that use Fedora)
In other words: you have achieved have vendor lock-in. Congratulations! Good for you. Not so good for me.
Whatever your decision have a good release cycle and keep on building that awesome free software!
Free software is, and always has been, about users. If something does not benefit the users should be able to switch away – where "something" is not whole applications, but individual *features* of applications.
Compare, for example, to the ad-ridden, spy-heavy, vendor-locked-in Android ecosystem, where users can't turn off unwanted features. Most software there is written to benefit the *developers*, not the *users*. Sure, it is more profitable for them that way, and the terms of some of those apps are even acceptable. But the fact that this model is finding its way into free software is worrying at best.
I think the line we should not cross is: including features that don't benefit the user and may be considered harmful. If I opt-in to ads – if you politely ask, and I, with mutual respect and understanding, agree to help your cause – then it's perfectly fine. (See vim's "Help kids in Uganda" message.) If you just quietly make money off me, or distract and annoy me until I have paid, then I can't and will not respect you.
It's not about tracking per se – I'm fine with e.g. opt-in usage reports that feed into research for making a better browser – that benefits me (in a very indirect and miniscule way, but in the end the purpose is for the *user's* benefit). Ads are a feature that only benefits the upstream and the companies that pay for the ads. From my (user's) perspective, there is no reason to have them on my system. There is no benefit to me from this feature. None at all. This is a major difference from Gnome search providers, which I personally don't like either, but I can see how they might be good for someone.
If I wanted software that works and is adequately funded, I'd use Chrome. If Mozilla slides into forcing ads on people, the difference between Chrome and Firefox becomes quantitative, not qualitative – Google does the same bad stuff, but worse.
Personally, I sadly no longer trust Mozilla to do what's best for me. (Please don't become the next Google. Yes, I'm aware Google makes lots of money and can easily fund development and thousands of events each year. That does not make them an example I think Mozilla should follow.)
If Fedora starts including, as soldiers in a Trojan horse of default software, upstreams' features that don't benefit me and may be considered harmful, then Fedora will lose my trust as well.
tl;dr: I think the line we should not cross is: including features that don't benefit the user and may be considered harmful.
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 03:28:11PM +0100, Petr Viktorin wrote:
tl;dr: I think the line we should not cross is: including features that don't benefit the user and may be considered harmful.
I don't think this is a very clear line. Should we drop all spreadsheet applications?
http://www.velocityreviews.com/threads/spreadsheets-considered-harmful.71784...
On 11/20/2014 04:02 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 03:28:11PM +0100, Petr Viktorin wrote:
tl;dr: I think the line we should not cross is: including features that don't benefit the user and may be considered harmful.
I don't think this is a very clear line. Should we drop all spreadsheet applications?
http://www.velocityreviews.com/threads/spreadsheets-considered-harmful.71784...
Spreadsheet applications exist to benefit the user, so they don't cross this line.
(With a short-circuiting "and"¹, you won't even get to the "may be considered harmful" part in this case...)
On 11/20/2014 03:28 PM, Petr Viktorin wrote:
It's not about tracking per se – I'm fine with e.g. opt-in usage reports that feed into research for making a better browser – that benefits me (in a very indirect and miniscule way, but in the end the purpose is for the *user's* benefit). Ads are a feature that only benefits the upstream and the companies that pay for the ads. From my (user's) perspective, there is no reason to have them on my system. There is no benefit to me from this feature. None at all. This is a major difference from Gnome search providers, which I personally don't like either, but I can see how they might be good for someone.
From the user perspective Mozilla provides you a high-quality browser for free (free as a beer). But they have to pay engineers for the work.
There are some other options there. To have free (basic) and paid (extended) Firefox versions - Red Hat goes this way. Or direct donation from users like Wikipedia. Mozilla chose the Ads way and you may or may not accept it and you exactly know what's the (asked) price.
That's still much better than Chrome where the price (user tracking) is hidden and you can't disable it.
You can remove the Ads from Firefox by one click so no big deal here. The same case is using Addblock to block Ads on Web. But you're giving nothing back then.
Every user likes the best software for free (as a beer), but there isn't any magic wand which makes it up for you.
ma.
On 11/20/2014 04:44 PM, Martin Stransky wrote:
On 11/20/2014 03:28 PM, Petr Viktorin wrote:
It's not about tracking per se – I'm fine with e.g. opt-in usage reports that feed into research for making a better browser – that benefits me (in a very indirect and miniscule way, but in the end the purpose is for the *user's* benefit). Ads are a feature that only benefits the upstream and the companies that pay for the ads. From my (user's) perspective, there is no reason to have them on my system. There is no benefit to me from this feature. None at all. This is a major difference from Gnome search providers, which I personally don't like either, but I can see how they might be good for someone.
From the user perspective Mozilla provides you a high-quality browser for free (free as a beer). But they have to pay engineers for the work.
Every piece of Fedora is like that, and yet I don't see any other software doing useless-for-me opt-out tracking. (Also, who am I paying? All authors of Firefox, or only the Mozilla employees?)
There are some other options there. To have free (basic) and paid (extended) Firefox versions - Red Hat goes this way. Or direct donation from users like Wikipedia. Mozilla chose the Ads way and you may or may not accept it and you exactly know what's the (asked) price.
The question is, will *Fedora* accept it on my behalf? Will Fedora no longer shield me from the ways of the Android developer?
That's still much better than Chrome where the price (user tracking) is hidden and you can't disable it.
Well, you can – the Chromium source is out there. The only catch is that Chromium is not built primarily for users, but for the developers' benefit.
You can remove the Ads from Firefox by one click so no big deal here. The same case is using Addblock to block Ads on Web. But you're giving nothing back then.
Is there now an *obligation* to give back? Because there never has been such a thing.
I personally give quite a lot back, not to Mozilla specifically but to open-source community as a whole – but it's not because I have an obligation to do it nor because I'm forced to do it. The recend trend of "open source" guiding me to become part of some monetization scheme saddens me.
Every user likes the best software for free (as a beer), but there isn't any magic wand which makes it up for you.
The process which gave us Firefox so far seemed quite fine. I'm sure it was no easy wand-waving, but so far it has been for the user first. Sure, Mozilla did not organize as many events or hire so many employees or get to dabble in the phone business. But the result is, so far, great.
I want my software to work for *me*; the free as in beer part is secondary.
On 2014-11-20, 16:17 GMT, Petr Viktorin wrote:
Every piece of Fedora is like that, and yet I don't see any other software doing useless-for-me opt-out tracking. (Also, who am I paying? All authors of Firefox, or only the Mozilla employees?)
How many multizillion LoC end-user applications able to compete with their proprietary opponents we have in Fedora? I know about one: LibreOffice, and a) as much as I like LibreOffice and its developers are for me one of the biggest heroes of the FLOSS universe, the reality is that they don’t keep that neck-to-neck run with Microsoft Office, b) I think it is possible we still wait when the development of LO gets to the similar state as Firefox and they will need to get some money to keep going.
“End-user” is there because other large pieces of Linux are paid by companies (not least by Red Hat) who spends tons of money on their development. However, not enough people buy end-user software so the resources are distributed accordingly. How many people Red Hat employs for kernel and how many for Firefox?
Is there now an *obligation* to give back? Because there never has been such a thing.
Of course, there always was and is. “You were freely given, freely give away”. But no “obligation” doesn’t have to mean “legal obligation” so nobody will sue you, if you are a free-rider. There are such things as “moral obligations”. If the only limit on your behavior is the letter of law, I am sorry for your friends and relatives.
And of course, if you really insist on non-monetized purely FLOSS-driven browsers, they are there as well. Go and use the browser formerly known as Epiphany or something else. I believe they are more or less useful, and if the freedom is so important for you, you will gladly sacrifice some functionality, won’t you?
Matěj
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 7:44 AM, Martin Stransky stransky@redhat.com wrote:
That's still much better than Chrome where the price (user tracking) is hidden and you can't disable it.
Well, Chrome isn't an option for Fedora due to proprietary portions... however, there is the Chromium project and there is an effort ongoing to get it included in the Fedora repositories.
I don't think Mozilla has done anything inherently evil by including these ads in Firefox. It was done in a very unobtrusive way and they made it ridiculously easy to disable.
One other point about Google, Chrome and the Chromium project. Many people have alluded to the evil empire of Google and it's nefarious tracking and hording of user information. It isn't nefarious if you explain to people exactly what you are doing. Google has gone to extreme lengths to make it's data collection policies as transparent as possible. You can learn about what Chrome collects and how by reading the privacy policy which is easily found. If you take the time to read it, you'll find there is nothing sinister at all going on. What is going on however is the fact that Google competitors are spreading FUD much like Microsoft had done about Linux.
On 2014-11-20, 14:28 GMT, Petr Viktorin wrote:
Ads are a feature that only benefits the upstream and the companies that pay for the ads. From my (user's) perspective, there is no reason to have them on my system. There is no benefit to me from this feature.
Sorry, I have to ask here the obvious question: how much did you pay for Firefox? How much do you think it costs to develop Firefox and to keep up with the Google’s endless pockets? Do you have some better solution for Mozilla to resolve this difference? I am quite sure your genial idea making couple of hundred million USD per year for them without any ads would be very welcome. Unfortunately, that communism thing somehow didn’t work ... it would be lovely if it did.
Best,
Matěj
Benjamin Kerensa <…@mozillausa.org> wrote: [snip]
Well, we can stop reading right at "mozillausa.org"… Of course the rest of the mail is a totally biased plug.
One thing though just forces me to reply:
but the fact is Fedora users come to expect Firefox to be the default much like they expect Gnome to be the default.
Says who? The fact is that I'm one of those people who also want that default changed, because I think that it is clearly not the best desktop environment we can offer to our users (due to its design decisions).
Kevin Kofler
On Nov 22, 2014 11:48 PM, "Kevin Kofler" kevin.kofler@chello.at wrote:
Benjamin Kerensa <…@mozillausa.org> wrote: [snip]
Well, we can stop reading right at "mozillausa.org"… Of course the rest of the mail is a totally biased plug.
Biased why because I work on Firefox? I work on a lot of Open Source projects.
One thing though just forces me to reply:
but the fact is Fedora users come to expect Firefox to be the default
much
like they expect Gnome to be the default.
Says who? The fact is that I'm one of those people who also want that default changed, because I think that it is clearly not the best desktop environment we can offer to our users (due to its design decisions).
Thinking and knowing what the best experience for your users is two different things. I would bet money if you surveyed fedora users they would pick Firefox and Gnome.
Personally I prefer data over knee jerk reactions because honestly this is what I see going on. I don't see a demand from users that want a different default I see developers who want to choose a different default based on their own beliefs.
If your users want something other than Firefox then give it to them but I don't see that argument being made.
Well I'll go on the record as niether a firefox user OR gnome (chrome/ium & xfce), and to be honest, what tv station or other sporting event for that matter doesn't do the same ? So its okay there ? because I pay for a ticket to watch a show/game, besides defaults are there for functionality OOB NOT the gospel lordy...
Corey W Sheldon Freelance IT Consultant, Multi-Discipline Tutor 310.909.7672 www.facebook.com/1stclassmobileshine
On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Benjamin Kerensa bkerensa@mozillausa.org wrote:
On Nov 22, 2014 11:48 PM, "Kevin Kofler" kevin.kofler@chello.at wrote:
Benjamin Kerensa <…@mozillausa.org> wrote: [snip]
Well, we can stop reading right at "mozillausa.org"… Of course the rest
of
the mail is a totally biased plug.
Biased why because I work on Firefox? I work on a lot of Open Source projects.
One thing though just forces me to reply:
but the fact is Fedora users come to expect Firefox to be the default
much
like they expect Gnome to be the default.
Says who? The fact is that I'm one of those people who also want that default changed, because I think that it is clearly not the best desktop environment we can offer to our users (due to its design decisions).
Thinking and knowing what the best experience for your users is two different things. I would bet money if you surveyed fedora users they would pick Firefox and Gnome.
Personally I prefer data over knee jerk reactions because honestly this is what I see going on. I don't see a demand from users that want a different default I see developers who want to choose a different default based on their own beliefs.
If your users want something other than Firefox then give it to them but I don't see that argument being made.
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
On Sun, 2014-11-23 at 02:59 -0800, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
Personally I prefer data over knee jerk reactions because honestly this is what I see going on. I don't see a demand from users that want a different default I see developers who want to choose a different default based on their own beliefs.
There is plenty of demand from users of Fedora for proprietary software to be included. "Beliefs" are what keep that proprietary software out.
-- Ben
If you want it in some cases (ie chrome i do ) learn to use it and accept that Fedora is FOSS minded so support for your endeavours may vary as will functionality and use/lack of funding projects for said FOSS projects deal or find another "tool"
Corey W Sheldon Freelance IT Consultant, Multi-Discipline Tutor 310.909.7672 www.facebook.com/1stclassmobileshine
On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Benjamin Kreuter ben.kreuter@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, 2014-11-23 at 02:59 -0800, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
Personally I prefer data over knee jerk reactions because honestly this
is
what I see going on. I don't see a demand from users that want a
different
default I see developers who want to choose a different default based on their own beliefs.
There is plenty of demand from users of Fedora for proprietary software to be included. "Beliefs" are what keep that proprietary software out.
-- Ben
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
On 11/23/2014 06:56 PM, Benjamin Kreuter wrote:
On Sun, 2014-11-23 at 02:59 -0800, Benjamin Kerensa wrote:
Personally I prefer data over knee jerk reactions because honestly this is what I see going on. I don't see a demand from users that want a different default I see developers who want to choose a different default based on their own beliefs.
There is plenty of demand from users of Fedora for proprietary software to be included. "Beliefs" are what keep that proprietary software out.
-- Ben
+1
Just because folks may like Firefox, it does not mean that everyone would accept a Firefox that imposes Ads on you without at least asking you first. There is only a fine line between being the super-hero and the super-villain.
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser).
Kevin Kofler
Am 15.11.2014 um 15:06 schrieb Kevin Kofler:
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser)
NO!
* i don't see that crap at all * even if i could disable it (or maybe have it in about:config) * i want to use Firefox for thousand reasons
it's *not* freedom to remove Firefox freedom would be make it not default but still offer it
On 11/15/2014 07:43 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 15.11.2014 um 15:06 schrieb Kevin Kofler:
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser)
NO!
- i don't see that crap at all
- even if i could disable it (or maybe have it in about:config)
- i want to use Firefox for thousand reasons
it's *not* freedom to remove Firefox freedom would be make it not default but still offer it
+1
Disabling the ADs feature from firefox, if that is possible, would be the right move for Fedora.
We also could lobby mozilla to re-consider this decision.
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Rejy M Cyriac rcyriac@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/15/2014 07:43 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 15.11.2014 um 15:06 schrieb Kevin Kofler:
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser)
NO!
- i don't see that crap at all
- even if i could disable it (or maybe have it in about:config)
- i want to use Firefox for thousand reasons
it's *not* freedom to remove Firefox freedom would be make it not default but still offer it
+1
Disabling the ADs feature from firefox, if that is possible, would be the right move for Fedora.
We also could lobby mozilla to re-consider this decision.
+1
-- Regards,
Rejy M Cyriac (rmc)
devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 6:56 PM, Christopher ctubbsii-fedora@apache.org wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Rejy M Cyriac rcyriac@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/15/2014 07:43 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 15.11.2014 um 15:06 schrieb Kevin Kofler:
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser)
NO!
- i don't see that crap at all
- even if i could disable it (or maybe have it in about:config)
- i want to use Firefox for thousand reasons
it's *not* freedom to remove Firefox freedom would be make it not default but still offer it
+1
Disabling the ADs feature from firefox, if that is possible, would be the right move for Fedora.
We also could lobby mozilla to re-consider this decision.
I don't really understand the issue at all. We also don't have any
problems offering google or any other search engine with our default configuration in firefox. But if a truly open-source foundation implements something to generate some revenue, which will most probably help the development of open source software, it suddenly becomes a big deal?
+1
-- Regards,
Rejy M Cyriac (rmc)
devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 5:41 PM, Johannes Lips johannes.lips@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 6:56 PM, Christopher ctubbsii-fedora@apache.org wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Rejy M Cyriac rcyriac@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/15/2014 07:43 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 15.11.2014 um 15:06 schrieb Kevin Kofler:
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser)
NO!
- i don't see that crap at all
- even if i could disable it (or maybe have it in about:config)
- i want to use Firefox for thousand reasons
it's *not* freedom to remove Firefox freedom would be make it not default but still offer it
+1
Disabling the ADs feature from firefox, if that is possible, would be the right move for Fedora.
We also could lobby mozilla to re-consider this decision.
I don't really understand the issue at all. We also don't have any
problems offering google or any other search engine with our default configuration in firefox. But if a truly open-source foundation implements something to generate some revenue, which will most probably help the development of open source software, it suddenly becomes a big deal?
I think the main difference is that it collects personal data and gives that information to for-profit companies, as a default configuration, without a user first "opting in" to that sort of data sharing. It is supposedly sanitized of user-identifying information, but a user should be given the option of deciding whether that sanitization is sufficient for them. Yes, Mozilla is "open source", but that's not the same as "free software" in every sense of the word, and people are wanting more from their free software, such as better control over their personal data, and the idea of privacy is working its way into some definitions of "free".
I don't necessarily see any reason to lobby Mozilla to change their decision... I think it's fine for them to do what they are doing. They might be welcome to a suggestion to include an installer/download option to give their direct download users some better controls over this feature (if they haven't done so already). But for Fedora, I think it makes sense to disable it by default, and if that is done, I don't see any issue. If Mozilla had a "first use" setup option to control this feature, then I would even say that it's not needed for Fedora to even bother doing anything. So, maybe that's something that could be brought up with Mozilla (if it doesn't already exist).
+1
-- Regards,
Rejy M Cyriac (rmc)
devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
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On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Christopher ctubbsii-fedora@apache.org wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 5:41 PM, Johannes Lips johannes.lips@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 6:56 PM, Christopher ctubbsii-fedora@apache.org wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Rejy M Cyriac rcyriac@redhat.com wrote:
On 11/15/2014 07:43 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 15.11.2014 um 15:06 schrieb Kevin Kofler:
Lars Seipel wrote: > What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship > applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE
Spin
which already ships Konqueror as the browser)
NO!
- i don't see that crap at all
- even if i could disable it (or maybe have it in about:config)
- i want to use Firefox for thousand reasons
it's *not* freedom to remove Firefox freedom would be make it not default but still offer it
+1
Disabling the ADs feature from firefox, if that is possible, would be the right move for Fedora.
We also could lobby mozilla to re-consider this decision.
I don't really understand the issue at all. We also don't have any
problems offering google or any other search engine with our default configuration in firefox. But if a truly open-source foundation implements something to generate some revenue, which will most probably help the development of open source software, it suddenly becomes a big deal?
I think the main difference is that it collects personal data and gives that information to for-profit companies, as a default configuration, without a user first "opting in" to that sort of data sharing. It is supposedly sanitized of user-identifying information, but a user should be given the option of deciding whether that sanitization is sufficient for them. Yes, Mozilla is "open source", but that's not the same as "free software" in every sense of the word, and people are wanting more from their free software, such as better control over their personal data, and the idea of privacy is working its way into some definitions of "free".
I don't necessarily see any reason to lobby Mozilla to change their decision... I think it's fine for them to do what they are doing. They might be welcome to a suggestion to include an installer/download option to give their direct download users some better controls over this feature (if they haven't done so already). But for Fedora, I think it makes sense to disable it by default, and if that is done, I don't see any issue. If Mozilla had a "first use" setup option to control this feature, then I would even say that it's not needed for Fedora to even bother doing anything. So, maybe that's something that could be brought up with Mozilla (if it doesn't already exist).
Would be nice if we replace booking.com and other organizational advertising with Fedora related projects and technologies?
+1
-- Regards,
Rejy M Cyriac (rmc)
devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
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On 2014-11-16, 05:31 GMT, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
I don't really understand the issue at all.
We have a "no-phone-home" and "no-spy" policy in Fedora.
And I believe the same goes for the Mozilla ... did anybody check their privacy policy?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/
Also, https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/13/more-details-on-directo... :
# Will Directory Tiles Profile Users to Target Content? # # We will use GeoIP to ensure Tiles content is relevant to the # user’s location, just as we recognize where a visitor to our # homepage came from so we can localize the language, but no # other user information is collected or considered.
# What information will Mozilla provide sponsored content # partners from the Directory Tiles?
# Mozilla is putting together just the basic metrics that # marketers or content publishers might need to understand the # value they are receiving. As of now, our expectation is that # we’ll be delivering the number of impressions (how many times # a tile was shown) and interactions (how many interactions with # a tile, i.e. clicks).
This doesn’t sound that bad to me.
Matěj
Am 16.11.2014 um 06:31 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
On 11/15/2014 11:41 PM, Johannes Lips wrote:
I don't really understand the issue at all.
We have a "no-phone-home" and "no-spy" policy in Fedora
and arbt is not phone-home?
if you really fight for a "no-phone-home"-policy you need to do that straight forwarded and not half baken like "this helps because we believe so and hence it got an exception"
that's not really credible because mozilla don't phone home your personal data AFAIK and until that happens it's not worse or better
On 11/16/2014 10:52 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 16.11.2014 um 06:31 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
On 11/15/2014 11:41 PM, Johannes Lips wrote:
I don't really understand the issue at all.
We have a "no-phone-home" and "no-spy" policy in Fedora
and arbt is not phone-home?
abrt is supposed to be opt-in.
if you really fight for a "no-phone-home"-policy you need to do that straight forwarded and not half baken like "this helps because we believe so and hence it got an exception"
Well, file bugs on "phone-homes".
that's not really credible because mozilla don't phone home your personal data AFAIK and until that happens it's not worse or better
Well, how to put it ... Mozilla.com's role in fedora has many times been subject to controvercies, but doubts have always been ruled ;)
Ralf
Am 16.11.2014 um 11:07 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
On 11/16/2014 10:52 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 16.11.2014 um 06:31 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
On 11/15/2014 11:41 PM, Johannes Lips wrote:
I don't really understand the issue at all.
We have a "no-phone-home" and "no-spy" policy in Fedora
and arbt is not phone-home?
abrt is supposed to be opt-in
the whole usage of firefox by a user too
the problem i have with that thread is not the thread itself but repeated suggestions to remove firefox from the distro instead talk about how to disable that *small* issue (if an issue at all since the data is anonymized) by default
Ralf Corsepius wrote:
Well, how to put it ... Mozilla.com's role in fedora has many times been subject to controvercies, but doubts have always been ruled ;)
They always get special exceptions for any and all Fedora policies that upstream does not want to comply with, with the excuse that otherwise we might lose the right to use the "Firefox" name (as if that were a catastrophe – Debian has been doing fine with "Iceweasel"). I'm totally fed up of that kind of unfair privileged treatment that NO other package in Fedora is getting.
Kevin Kofler
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 2:15 AM, Kevin Kofler kevin.kofler@chello.at wrote:
Ralf Corsepius wrote:
Well, how to put it ... Mozilla.com's role in fedora has many times been subject to controvercies, but doubts have always been ruled ;)
They always get special exceptions for any and all Fedora policies that upstream does not want to comply with, with the excuse that otherwise we might lose the right to use the "Firefox" name (as if that were a catastrophe – Debian has been doing fine with "Iceweasel"). I'm totally fed up of that kind of unfair privileged treatment that NO other package in Fedora is getting.
Maybe no other package but Fedora itself. Criticizing Mozilla for doing the same that we (Fedora) do is well ... hypocritical.
On 11/17/2014 02:15 AM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
Ralf Corsepius wrote:
Well, how to put it ... Mozilla.com's role in fedora has many times been subject to controvercies, but doubts have always been ruled ;)
They always get special exceptions for any and all Fedora policies that upstream does not want to comply with, with the excuse that otherwise we might lose the right to use the "Firefox" name (as if that were a catastrophe – Debian has been doing fine with "Iceweasel"). I'm totally fed up of that kind of unfair privileged treatment that NO other package in Fedora is getting.
I don't understand what are you talking about. Firefox in Fedora tries to carry minimal amount of patches because it's difficult to maintain those patches and rebase/update them with each Firefox release. If we need any modification in Fedora we ship it.
All active Firefox development happens upstream anyway (gtk3 port, libnotify support recently) so Fedora does not need any extra patches, we get them from upstream anyway.
If there's any issue which breaks Fedora rules, please file a bug and ideally add a patch for it. I'll gladly help you to fix any issue. I know only about some bundled libraries, but we don't have a fix for that and there are more pressing issues to fix.
ma.
On 11/16/2014 02:47 PM, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
On Sun, 2014-11-16 at 10:52 +0100, Reindl Harald wrote:
and arbt is not phone-home?
ABRT will never send anything without user permission.
Except when it does (due to bugs).
And I'm sorry to say that I think the UI is still confusing and may not achieve the goal of obtaining informed consent.
Florian Weimer wrote:
And I'm sorry to say that I think the UI is still confusing and may not achieve the goal of obtaining informed consent.
For example, do users realize that using the retrace server means sending the backtrace to the server, so they have effectively uploaded it even if they're not attaching it to the bug report (or even not filing a bug report at all)?
Kevin Kofler
On 11/16/2014 06:31 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
On 11/15/2014 11:41 PM, Johannes Lips wrote:
I don't really understand the issue at all.
We have a "no-phone-home" and "no-spy" policy in Fedora.
I don't think we do.
Anaconda, for example, phones home even before you select the installation media.
Perhaps more significantly, at least in my tests, the Firefox URL classifier reports some kind of data about matches (which reflect user browsing behavior) to Google, along with long-term Google tracking cookies. This is not readily apparent from the browser source code, and the data exchanged with Google has been obfuscated to make independent review difficult.
On 11/17/2014 09:35 AM, Florian Weimer wrote:
On 11/16/2014 06:31 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
On 11/15/2014 11:41 PM, Johannes Lips wrote:
I don't really understand the issue at all.
We have a "no-phone-home" and "no-spy" policy in Fedora.
I don't think we do.
It's should be to be part of the FPG ;)
We (FPC) were fighting packages phoning home since the earliest days of FPC - You might recall the discussions on phone-home and data-privacy in smolt, abrt and packages wanting to add "3rd party repos".
I also believe to recall FPC once having discussed how to handle packages which distribute ads, but I don't recall us having taken a decision - I personally, would be very strongly opposed to this, because this would open a can of worms in many areas.
It's certainly an area, which in the ages of espionage, big-data, ads and virus-infected ads needs to be clarified.
Anaconda, for example, phones home even before you select the installation media.
What does it transmit? IIRC, the only permitted "phone-home" was accessing "yum metadata" and mirrorlists.
Ralf
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 06:31:39AM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
I don't really understand the issue at all.
We have a "no-phone-home" and "no-spy" policy in Fedora.
*Is* there a formal, written policy somewhere? (And, while related to the advertising issue, this seems separate in many ways.)
| > Am 15.11.2014 um 15:06 schrieb Kevin Kofler: | >> Lars Seipel wrote: | >>> What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship | >>> applications to carry ads and report tracking data? | >> | >> No! | >> | >> IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in | >> favor of | >> Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin | >> which | >> already ships Konqueror as the browser) | > | > NO! | > | > * i don't see that crap at all | > * even if i could disable it (or maybe have it in about:config) | > * i want to use Firefox for thousand reasons | > | > it's *not* freedom to remove Firefox | > freedom would be make it not default but still offer it | > | +1 | | Disabling the ADs feature from firefox, if that is possible, would be | the right move for Fedora. | | We also could lobby mozilla to re-consider this decision.
Given the ability to have different search engines within Firefox (and I default to duckduckgo.com), if we can have Firefox have a "off-by-default" option for advertisements, then we all win.
Harish
On Sat, 2014-11-15 at 15:06 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely
Showing ads does not make Firefox nonfree. The only reason we should completely remove Firefox from Fedora is if it starts shipping nonfree or patent-encumbered code -- like the Cisco binary that just recently got removed, or that EME module from Adobe that they're planning to include -- in such a way that is difficult or impossible to strip out.
in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser).
We're working hard on WebKitGTK+ (and by extension Epiphany, which, needless to say, will not run ads on the new tab page :) and it will be ready to replace Firefox as the default in Workstation soon, hopefully in the F23-F25 time scale, at which time I hope it will be considered for that role. But it's not yet good enough, and users won't like it if we switch before it is.
Midori does not securely handle unverified TLS certificates, so it's not safe to use for HTTPS. It's not even worth considering until that's fixed.
We should stick with Firefox for the time being, and simply disable the ad feature one way or another.
On November 15, 2014 5:51:28 PM EET, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Sat, 2014-11-15 at 15:06 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely
Showing ads does not make Firefox nonfree. The only reason we should completely remove Firefox from Fedora is if it starts shipping nonfree or patent-encumbered code -- like the Cisco binary that just recently got removed, or that EME module from Adobe that they're planning to include -- in such a way that is difficult or impossible to strip out.
There is no EME module. There is EME, which is what Firefox will ship (and it's of course open source) and the CDM module, which will be user's choice to install it or not (like Adobe Flash today).
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 10:51 AM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
We should stick with Firefox for the time being, and simply disable the ad feature one way or another.
Good luck with that. I'm concerned that Firefox is suffering issues similar to OpenSSL in its size and cross-platform support and backwards compatibility. It's doing too many things, across to many platforms, with way, way too many non-critical features encumbering the codebase to be stable anymore.
I'm looking at the Bugzilla for Firefox. A look for open bugs reports "NEW" bugs that are 7 years old, and approximately 10,000 bugs, including those for Firefox for other platforms, and getting the full list generates the message "This list is too long for Bugzilla's little mind; the Next/Prev/First/Last buttons won't appear on individual bugs."
That's never a good sign, even on a big open source project.
On 15.11.2014 16:51, Michael Catanzaro wrote: ...
We're working hard on WebKitGTK+ ...
...
This is something new? :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#WebKit-based WebKit-based Amazon Kindle (experimental) Arora (discontinued) BOLT browser (discontinued) Chromium Google Chrome (based on fork Blink since Chrome v. 28) Opera[25] Amigo Torch browser Comodo Dragon QIP Surf Epic Nichrome SRWare Iron Uran Browser Yandex browser RockMelt (discontinued) Dolphin Browser (Android and Bada) Dooble Flock (discontinued) (version 3.0 and above) iCab (version 4 uses WebKit; earlier versions used its own rendering engine) Iris Browser (discontinued) Konqueror (version 4 can use WebKit as an alternative to its native KHTML[26]) Maxthon (version 3.0 and above) Midori Nintendo 3DS NetFront Browser NX OmniWeb OWB QtWeb QupZilla Rekonq Safari Shiira (discontinued) Sleipnir Steel for Android Steam ingame browser surf Uzbl Web Web Browser for S60, used in all Nokia Symbian smartphones. webOS, used in the Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, Pre 2, HP Veer, Pre 3 and TouchPad mobile devices WebPositive, browser in Haiku xombrero
Dne 15.11.2014 v 15:06 Kevin Kofler napsal(a):
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser).
Kevin Kofler
I believe M$ made "good experience" with ballot screen, may be we should implement something similar in open source spirit ;)
Vít
Hi,
On 11/16/2014 05:36 PM, Vít Ondruch wrote:
Dne 15.11.2014 v 15:06 Kevin Kofler napsal(a):
Lars Seipel wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
No!
IMHO, we should consider dropping Firefox from Fedora entirely, in favor of Epiphany for Workstation and Midori for the Spins (except the KDE Spin which already ships Konqueror as the browser).
With all due respect to the developers, Midori is not production ready.
Kevin Kofler
I believe M$ made "good experience" with ballot screen, may be we should implement something similar in open source spirit ;)
If we do not want Firefox as default, this seems to be much better option than just replacing it with a specific one IMHO.
Tomas Radej
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 7:17 AM, Tomas Radej tradej@redhat.com wrote:
I believe M$ made "good experience" with ballot screen, may be we should
implement something similar in open source spirit ;)
If we do not want Firefox as default, this seems to be much better option than just replacing it with a specific one IMHO.
The "ballot screen" was required to be developed by Microsoft as part of the settlement of the anti-trust case with the EU. Mozilla's Firefox ads don't even begin to approach what Microsoft was doing. We don't need a "default-o-matic" program where people would end up choosing Firefox anyway. If we really wanted to provide a free alternative to Firefox, we'd get Chromium working - it is really the only viable alternative.
Hi,
On 11/18/2014 05:46 PM, Gerald B. Cox wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 7:17 AM, Tomas Radej tradej@redhat.com wrote:
I believe M$ made "good experience" with ballot screen, may be we should
implement something similar in open source spirit ;)
If we do not want Firefox as default, this seems to be much better option than just replacing it with a specific one IMHO.
The "ballot screen" was required to be developed by Microsoft as part of the settlement of the anti-trust case with the EU. Mozilla's Firefox ads don't even begin to approach what Microsoft was doing. We don't need a
Nobody said we'd do it for the same reason.
"default-o-matic" program where people would end up choosing Firefox anyway. If we really wanted to provide a free alternative to Firefox, we'd get Chromium working - it is really the only viable alternative.
While I concur that there's not much alternative to Firefox, I think in this context, choosing Chromium is going out of the frying pan and into the fire. I might have been doing it wrong, but even after I disabled every single call-home thing I could, wireshark still detected a few packets sent to Google servers upon Chromium starting, whereas with Firefox, nothing was sent at all until I started typing in the address bar.
Additionally, the "Google way" of open source development is arguably less-than-stellar, as illustrated in [1], and some of the bugs that prevent Chromium to be present in the mainline Fedora repositories have been open since 2009 without much progress (listed as blockers for [2]).
Based on the aforementioned, I think it's infinitely easier to fix Firefox than push for Chromium.
Tomas Radej
[1] http://ostatic.com/blog/making-projects-easier-to-package-why-chromium-isnt-...
[2] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=28287
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 9:25 AM, Tomas Radej tradej@redhat.com wrote:
Based on the aforementioned, I think it's infinitely easier to fix Firefox than push for Chromium.
I am aware of bugs you mentioned. The fact remains that Chromium is the only viable alternative to Firefox... so if we're interested in providing an alternative to Firefox then we need resolve the blocking bugs. Regarding "a few packets being sent to Google"... that could be anything or nothing. If you're curious then I would suggest you open a bug with the Chromium project and ask. I'm not at all concerned about it, and FWIW people are accusing Mozilla of the exact same thing.
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 09:44:04 -0800, "Gerald B. Cox" gbcox@bzb.us wrote:
I am aware of bugs you mentioned. The fact remains that Chromium is the only viable alternative to Firefox...
Why do you claim that? What requirements do you think we must provide for in our default browser that other browser we have packages for don't meet? I find Midori reasonable on x86_64. There is currently an i686 problem because a library it uses is compiled with an incorrect architecure (it uses instructions that aren't supported on hardware Fedora is upposed to support). So I have problems with it on i686, but this isn't directly a Midori problem. Seamonkey seems pretty reasonable as well.
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
Why do you claim that? What requirements do you think we must provide for in our default browser that other browser we have packages for don't meet? I find Midori reasonable on x86_64. There is currently an i686 problem because a library it uses is compiled with an incorrect architecure (it uses instructions that aren't supported on hardware Fedora is upposed to support). So I have problems with it on i686, but this isn't directly a Midori problem. Seamonkey seems pretty reasonable as well.
That's a webkitgtk issue, look at how we handle this in QtWebKit.
(You have to build the library twice, as /usr/lib/libwebkitgtk* with the WebKit JIT disabled and as /usr/lib/sse2/libwebkitgtk* with the JIT enabled. The WebKit JavaScript JIT requires SSE2. The interpreter works fine without it.)
Kevin Kofler
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 22:22 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
That's a webkitgtk issue, look at how we handle this in QtWebKit.
(You have to build the library twice, as /usr/lib/libwebkitgtk* with the WebKit JIT disabled and as /usr/lib/sse2/libwebkitgtk* with the JIT enabled. The WebKit JavaScript JIT requires SSE2. The interpreter works fine without it.)
Kevin Kofler
Hi,
Is there a bug report about this? Could you point me to it if so? i686 is absolutely a supported architecture, it's just not one that's regularly tested.
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 16:22:54 -0600, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
Is there a bug report about this? Could you point me to it if so? i686 is absolutely a supported architecture, it's just not one that's regularly tested.
This is the one for webkit: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1103967
I got this partially confused with the one for xchat: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1101811 The xchat one is where another library is the culprit.
I'm killfiling this thread and I'm inches away from leaving the mailing list. Can we move on?
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 16:22:54 -0600, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
Is there a bug report about this? Could you point me to it if so? i686 is absolutely a supported architecture, it's just not one that's regularly tested.
This is the one for webkit: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1103967
I got this partially confused with the one for xchat: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1101811 The xchat one is where another library is the culprit.
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Lars Seipel lars.seipel@gmail.com wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
I definitely don't want the software I use to phone home and report on what I'm doing, not any more than what is strictly necessary for technical reasons.
Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins.
I'm wondering how that works. If I disable the ads by setting the new tab page to about:blank, will that also disable the tracking?
Björn Persson
Am 15.11.2014 um 16:10 schrieb Björn Persson:
Lars Seipel lars.seipel@gmail.com wrote:
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
I definitely don't want the software I use to phone home and report on what I'm doing, not any more than what is strictly necessary for technical reasons.
Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins.
I'm wondering how that works. If I disable the ads by setting the new tab page to about:blank, will that also disable the tracking?
yes it will since it is open source and so mozilla can't and won't risk to still track (despites that you can't track impressions and clicks of something which is not there and if they would, well the advertisment partners kill them for the lie)
so can we please stop the FUD and just disable that feature in Fedora as default? oh
and i have the "about:blank" on the desktop for a long time because i also don't want a tab preview (while nice on the smartphone) just because nobody needs to see what i have recently browsed only because we share the same room
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Lars Seipel lars.seipel@gmail.com wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
On a pristine F21 install using Gnome, when first launching Firefox, users are presented with a number of tiles, depending on screen size. One of those is a so-called "sponsored" tile chosen from a range of available advertisements (e.g. for booking.com, there's also one for the Snowden movie), apparently depending on geographical location.
When this "feature" got originally announced[1], there was a discussion on -devel if this kind of stuff is really appropriate for Fedora.
Some time later Mozilla seemed to have canceled the feature, quoting "That’s not going to happen. That’s not who we are at Mozilla." as one of the reasons[2].
Apparently, they (again) reconsidered, pushing the feature to nightlies a few months ago. Well, it now hit the stable branch and, therefore, Fedora.
This is how Mozilla pitches the feature to advertisers[3]:
To support ad personalization, Mozilla created an internal data system that aggregates user information while stripping out personally identifiable information. Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins. Its advertising partners are also privy to that data.
Personally, I don't think that showing advertisements on the free software desktop is appropriate. Our users are supposed to be able to fully trust our software. That's one of our most-often touted strenghts. I don't think the ability to "track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins" is something that is compatible with that, regardless of this data being tied to "personally identifiable information" or not.
Firefox's behaviour is probably nothing extraordinary on the other platforms Mozilla is targeting. Compared to the prevalent attitude of proprietary vendors, especially on mobile, it doesn't sound that bad anymore. I don't think that's a suitable scale for Fedora, though.
From a user perspective, it's not that hard to disable the feature. Upon first seeing that page a tooltip is shown to hint at the possibility. Users can choose between three modes, "Enhanced", "Classic" and "Blank". Contrary to what is stated in the Mozilla kb[4], the only one that actually disables the ads is "Blank", which is equal to setting the new tab page to about:blank.
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformatio... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/ [3] http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/mozilla-finally-releases-its-b... [4] https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_enhanced-tiles -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
The "ads" are not intrusive, they don't collect personally identifiable data, and can be disabled with a selection from a button on the start page! See: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848017/how-to-get-rid-of-firefoxs-new-ads-on...
I think the best way is to ship Firefox as is, if somebody doesn't want to help the open source project generating some revenue using these ads, he can disable them.
When you use Google search engine in any browser, it is collecting more data than this feature in Firefox.
If you want to disable them, disable them in the default configuration we ship, nothing more is needed.
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad < mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Lars Seipel lars.seipel@gmail.com wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
On a pristine F21 install using Gnome, when first launching Firefox, users are presented with a number of tiles, depending on screen size. One of those is a so-called "sponsored" tile chosen from a range of available advertisements (e.g. for booking.com, there's also one for the Snowden movie), apparently depending on geographical location.
When this "feature" got originally announced[1], there was a discussion on -devel if this kind of stuff is really appropriate for Fedora.
Some time later Mozilla seemed to have canceled the feature, quoting "That’s not going to happen. That’s not who we are at Mozilla." as one of the reasons[2].
Apparently, they (again) reconsidered, pushing the feature to nightlies a few months ago. Well, it now hit the stable branch and, therefore, Fedora.
This is how Mozilla pitches the feature to advertisers[3]:
To support ad personalization, Mozilla created an internal data system that aggregates user information while stripping out personally identifiable information. Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins. Its advertising partners are also privy to that data.
Personally, I don't think that showing advertisements on the free software desktop is appropriate. Our users are supposed to be able to fully trust our software. That's one of our most-often touted strenghts. I don't think the ability to "track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins" is something that is compatible with that, regardless of this data being tied to "personally identifiable information" or not.
Firefox's behaviour is probably nothing extraordinary on the other platforms Mozilla is targeting. Compared to the prevalent attitude of proprietary vendors, especially on mobile, it doesn't sound that bad anymore. I don't think that's a suitable scale for Fedora, though.
From a user perspective, it's not that hard to disable the feature. Upon first seeing that page a tooltip is shown to hint at the possibility. Users can choose between three modes, "Enhanced", "Classic" and "Blank". Contrary to what is stated in the Mozilla kb[4], the only one that actually disables the ads is "Blank", which is equal to setting the new tab page to about:blank.
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
[1]
https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformatio...
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/ [3]
http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/mozilla-finally-releases-its-b...
[4]
https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_enhanced-tiles
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
The "ads" are not intrusive, they don't collect personally identifiable data, and can be disabled with a selection from a button on the start page! See:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848017/how-to-get-rid-of-firefoxs-new-ads-on...
I think the best way is to ship Firefox as is, if somebody doesn't want to help the open source project generating some revenue using these ads, he can disable them.
The framing of the concerns expressed here as people not wanting to contribute back and help an open source project with revenue (through this mechanism or otherwise), does not reflect the concerns raised. The concerns raised are that the default configuration is an "opt-out" vs. "opt-in" model of Firefox issuing network calls back to Mozilla's servers, and Fedora's user base expects "opt-in" for these sorts of things. It's not about not being willing to help the project out... it's about not being able to vet that method of helping out prior to it taking place.
When you use Google search engine in any browser, it is collecting more data than this feature in Firefox.
This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they are not.
If you want to disable them, disable them in the default configuration we ship, nothing more is needed.
+1, disabling it by default in Fedora's packaging seems to make the most sense.
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
I went back and reviewed Fedora Forbidden Items https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items?rd=ForbiddenItems and saw nothing that applied to the situation with Firefox. While I agree with the statement: "The concerns raised are that the default configuration is an "opt-out" vs. "opt-in" model of Firefox issuing network calls back to Mozilla's servers, and Fedora's user base expects "opt-in" for these sorts of things."; I also expect that same user base would overwhelmingly prefer using Firefox (with ads), Chromium or Google Chrome over Epiphany, Midori or Konqueror.
If you can disable the ads in Fedora's packaging, then by all means do so. Changing default packages however is a big deal and IMO the only other browser that could match the universal compatibility and functionality of Mozilla Firefox is the Chromium project. Chromium has yet to debut in the Fedora repositories... so that situation would have to be remedied first.
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Gerald B. Cox gbcox@bzb.us wrote:
I went back and reviewed Fedora Forbidden Items https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items?rd=ForbiddenItems and saw nothing that applied to the situation with Firefox. While I agree with the statement: "The concerns raised are that the default configuration is an "opt-out" vs. "opt-in" model of Firefox issuing network calls back to Mozilla's servers, and Fedora's user base expects "opt-in" for these sorts of things."; I also expect that same user base would overwhelmingly prefer using Firefox (with ads), Chromium or Google Chrome over Epiphany, Midori or Konqueror.
If you can disable the ads in Fedora's packaging, then by all means do so. Changing default packages however is a big deal and IMO the only other browser that could match the universal compatibility and functionality of Mozilla Firefox is the Chromium project. Chromium has yet to debut in the Fedora repositories... so that situation would have to be remedied first.
I'm a huge fan of both Fedora and Firefox. Please don't put me in a position where I have to choose between them for some silly non-technical "issue".
On 11/16/2014 08:24 PM, Christopher wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad <mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Lars Seipel <lars.seipel@gmail.com <mailto:lars.seipel@gmail.com>> wrote: > So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the > "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff. > > On a pristine F21 install using Gnome, when first launching Firefox, > users are presented with a number of tiles, depending on screen size. > One of those is a so-called "sponsored" tile chosen from a range of > available advertisements (e.g. for booking.com <http://booking.com>, there's also one for the > Snowden movie), apparently depending on geographical location. > > When this "feature" got originally announced[1], there was a discussion > on -devel if this kind of stuff is really appropriate for Fedora. > > Some time later Mozilla seemed to have canceled the feature, quoting > "That’s not going to happen. That’s not who we are at Mozilla." as one > of the reasons[2]. > > Apparently, they (again) reconsidered, pushing the feature to nightlies > a few months ago. Well, it now hit the stable branch and, therefore, > Fedora. > > This is how Mozilla pitches the feature to advertisers[3]: > >> To support ad personalization, Mozilla created an internal data system >> that aggregates user information while stripping out personally >> identifiable information. Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the >> number of ads a user hides or pins. Its advertising partners are also >> privy to that data. > > Personally, I don't think that showing advertisements on the free > software desktop is appropriate. Our users are supposed to be able to > fully trust our software. That's one of our most-often touted strenghts. > I don't think the ability to "track impressions, clicks, and the number > of ads a user hides or pins" is something that is compatible with that, > regardless of this data being tied to "personally identifiable > information" or not. > > Firefox's behaviour is probably nothing extraordinary on the other > platforms Mozilla is targeting. Compared to the prevalent attitude of > proprietary vendors, especially on mobile, it doesn't sound that bad > anymore. I don't think that's a suitable scale for Fedora, though. > > From a user perspective, it's not that hard to disable the feature. Upon > first seeing that page a tooltip is shown to hint at the possibility. > Users can choose between three modes, "Enhanced", "Classic" and "Blank". > Contrary to what is stated in the Mozilla kb[4], the only one that > actually disables the ads is "Blank", which is equal to setting the new > tab page to about:blank. > > What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship > applications to carry ads and report tracking data? > > [1] > https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center/ > [2] > https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/ > [3] > http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/mozilla-finally-releases-its-browser-ad-product-hints-at-programmatic-in-2015/ > [4] > https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_enhanced-tiles > -- > devel mailing list > devel@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:devel@lists.fedoraproject.org> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel > Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct The "ads" are not intrusive, they don't collect personally identifiable data, and can be disabled with a selection from a button on the start page! See: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848017/how-to-get-rid-of-firefoxs-new-ads-on-the-new-tab-page.html I think the best way is to ship Firefox as is, if somebody doesn't want to help the open source project generating some revenue using these ads, he can disable them.
The framing of the concerns expressed here as people not wanting to contribute back and help an open source project with revenue (through this mechanism or otherwise), does not reflect the concerns raised. The concerns raised are that the default configuration is an "opt-out" vs. "opt-in" model of Firefox issuing network calls back to Mozilla's servers, and Fedora's user base expects "opt-in" for these sorts of things. It's not about not being willing to help the project out... it's about not being able to vet that method of helping out prior to it taking place.
When you use Google search engine in any browser, it is collecting more data than this feature in Firefox.
This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they are not.
Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/16/2014 08:24 PM, Christopher wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad <mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Lars Seipel <lars.seipel@gmail.com <mailto:lars.seipel@gmail.com>> wrote: > So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on
the
> "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff. > > On a pristine F21 install using Gnome, when first launching
Firefox,
> users are presented with a number of tiles, depending on screen
size.
> One of those is a so-called "sponsored" tile chosen from a range of > available advertisements (e.g. for booking.com <http://booking.com>, there's also one for the > Snowden movie), apparently depending on geographical location. > > When this "feature" got originally announced[1], there was a discussion > on -devel if this kind of stuff is really appropriate for Fedora. > > Some time later Mozilla seemed to have canceled the feature,
quoting
> "That’s not going to happen. That’s not who we are at Mozilla." as
one
> of the reasons[2]. > > Apparently, they (again) reconsidered, pushing the feature to nightlies > a few months ago. Well, it now hit the stable branch and,
therefore,
> Fedora. > > This is how Mozilla pitches the feature to advertisers[3]: > >> To support ad personalization, Mozilla created an internal data system >> that aggregates user information while stripping out personally >> identifiable information. Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the >> number of ads a user hides or pins. Its advertising partners are
also
>> privy to that data. > > Personally, I don't think that showing advertisements on the free > software desktop is appropriate. Our users are supposed to be able
to
> fully trust our software. That's one of our most-often touted strenghts. > I don't think the ability to "track impressions, clicks, and the number > of ads a user hides or pins" is something that is compatible with that, > regardless of this data being tied to "personally identifiable > information" or not. > > Firefox's behaviour is probably nothing extraordinary on the other > platforms Mozilla is targeting. Compared to the prevalent attitude
of
> proprietary vendors, especially on mobile, it doesn't sound that
bad
> anymore. I don't think that's a suitable scale for Fedora, though. > > From a user perspective, it's not that hard to disable the feature. Upon > first seeing that page a tooltip is shown to hint at the
possibility.
> Users can choose between three modes, "Enhanced", "Classic" and "Blank". > Contrary to what is stated in the Mozilla kb[4], the only one that > actually disables the ads is "Blank", which is equal to setting the new > tab page to about:blank. > > What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship > applications to carry ads and report tracking data? > > [1] >
https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformatio...
> [2] >
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/
> [3] >
http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/mozilla-finally-releases-its-b...
> [4] >
https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_enhanced-tiles
> -- > devel mailing list > devel@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:
devel@lists.fedoraproject.org>
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel > Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct The "ads" are not intrusive, they don't collect personally identifiable data, and can be disabled with a selection from a button on the start page! See:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848017/how-to-get-rid-of-firefoxs-new-ads-on...
I think the best way is to ship Firefox as is, if somebody doesn't want to help the open source project generating some revenue using these ads, he can disable them.
The framing of the concerns expressed here as people not wanting to contribute back and help an open source project with revenue (through this mechanism or otherwise), does not reflect the concerns raised. The concerns raised are that the default configuration is an "opt-out" vs. "opt-in" model of Firefox issuing network calls back to Mozilla's servers, and Fedora's user base expects "opt-in" for these sorts of things. It's not about not being willing to help the project out... it's about not being able to vet that method of helping out prior to it taking place.
When you use Google search engine in any browser, it is collecting more data than this feature in Firefox.
This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they are not.
Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
First, that's not quite true. Firefox does a call home first, where Mozilla will then determine your location from your IP (and possibly other data presented to them in the future), in order to present you with ads. As I understand it, it will do this the first time you open a new tab, before you even navigate to any site (such as about:config).
Second, a user can easily accidentally click on ad, since it is mixed among other tiles, with the user's browsing habits. A user may recognize their error pretty quickly, but the damage will have already been done, as their data will have already been sent. Even if a user intentionally clicks on one of these tiled ads, this is a new kind of ad for a large user base... and expectations about the implications of clicking on a user's privacy are not yet established. A user who intentionally clicks on these may not be willing to accept these implications. Hence, the preference for an informed "opt-in" (or at the very least, an early, loud opportunity to "opt-out"... but that's hard to do in Fedora packaging if it's not already in upstream).
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Hi,
I just wanted to make a recommendation based on a few comments that were made thus far.
On 11/16/2014 11:11 PM, Christopher wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Nikos Roussos <comzeradd@fedoraproject.org mailto:comzeradd@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On 11/16/2014 08:24 PM, Christopher wrote: > On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad > <mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com <mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> <mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com <mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com>>> > wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 4:25 PM, Lars Seipel <lars.seipel@gmail.com <mailto:lars.seipel@gmail.com> > <mailto:lars.seipel@gmail.com <mailto:lars.seipel@gmail.com>>> wrote: > > So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the > > "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff. > > > > On a pristine F21 install using Gnome, when first launching Firefox, > > users are presented with a number of tiles, depending on screen size. > > One of those is a so-called "sponsored" tile chosen from a range of > > available advertisements (e.g. forbooking.com <http://booking.com> > <http://booking.com>, there's also one for the > > Snowden movie), apparently depending on geographical location. > > > > When this "feature" got originally announced[1], there was a > discussion > > on -devel if this kind of stuff is really appropriate for Fedora. > > > > Some time later Mozilla seemed to have canceled the feature, quoting > > "That’s not going to happen. That’s not who we are at Mozilla." as one > > of the reasons[2]. > > > > Apparently, they (again) reconsidered, pushing the feature to > nightlies > > a few months ago. Well, it now hit the stable branch and, therefore, > > Fedora. > > > > This is how Mozilla pitches the feature to advertisers[3]: > > > >> To support ad personalization, Mozilla created an internal data > system > >> that aggregates user information while stripping out personally > >> identifiable information. Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, > and the > >> number of ads a user hides or pins. Its advertising partners are also > >> privy to that data. > > > > Personally, I don't think that showing advertisements on the free > > software desktop is appropriate. Our users are supposed to be able to > > fully trust our software. That's one of our most-often touted > strenghts. > > I don't think the ability to "track impressions, clicks, and the > number > > of ads a user hides or pins" is something that is compatible with > that, > > regardless of this data being tied to "personally identifiable > > information" or not. > > > > Firefox's behaviour is probably nothing extraordinary on the other > > platforms Mozilla is targeting. Compared to the prevalent attitude of > > proprietary vendors, especially on mobile, it doesn't sound that bad > > anymore. I don't think that's a suitable scale for Fedora, though. > > > > From a user perspective, it's not that hard to disable the > feature. Upon > > first seeing that page a tooltip is shown to hint at the possibility. > > Users can choose between three modes, "Enhanced", "Classic" and > "Blank". > > Contrary to what is stated in the Mozilla kb[4], the only one that > > actually disables the ads is "Blank", which is equal to setting > the new > > tab page to about:blank. > > > > What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship > > applications to carry ads and report tracking data? > > > > [1] > > > https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center/ > > [2] > > > https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/ > > [3] > > > http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/mozilla-finally-releases-its-browser-ad-product-hints-at-programmatic-in-2015/ > > [4] > > > https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_enhanced-tiles > > -- > > devel mailing list > > devel@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:devel@lists.fedoraproject.org> <mailto:devel@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:devel@lists.fedoraproject.org>> > > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel > > Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct > > The "ads" are not intrusive, they don't collect personally > identifiable data, and can be disabled with a selection from a button > on the start page! > See: > http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848017/how-to-get-rid-of-firefoxs-new-ads-on-the-new-tab-page.html > > I think the best way is to ship Firefox as is, if somebody doesn't > want to help the open source project generating some revenue using > these ads, he can disable them. > > > The framing of the concerns expressed here as people not wanting to > contribute back and help an open source project with revenue (through > this mechanism or otherwise), does not reflect the concerns raised. The > concerns raised are that the default configuration is an "opt-out" vs. > "opt-in" model of Firefox issuing network calls back to Mozilla's > servers, and Fedora's user base expects "opt-in" for these sorts of > things. It's not about not being willing to help the project out... it's > about not being able to vet that method of helping out prior to it > taking place. > > > When you use Google search engine in any browser, it is collecting > more data than this feature in Firefox. > > > This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers > are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or > permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they > are not. Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
First, that's not quite true. Firefox does a call home first, where Mozilla will then determine your location from your IP (and possibly other data presented to them in the future), in order to present you with ads. As I understand it, it will do this the first time you open a new tab, before you even navigate to any site (such as about:config).
Second, a user can easily accidentally click on ad, since it is mixed among other tiles, with the user's browsing habits. A user may recognize their error pretty quickly, but the damage will have already been done, as their data will have already been sent. Even if a user intentionally clicks on one of these tiled ads, this is a new kind of ad for a large user base... and expectations about the implications of clicking on a user's privacy are not yet established. A user who intentionally clicks on these may not be willing to accept these implications. Hence, the preference for an informed "opt-in" (or at the very least, an early, loud opportunity to "opt-out"... but that's hard to do in Fedora packaging if it's not already in upstream).
Is it possible to recommend GNU IceCat instead:
Description : GNUZilla Icecat is a fully-free fork of Mozilla Firefox. : Three extensions are included to this version of IceCat: : : * GNU LibreJS : * The IceCat Privacy Extension : * IceCat Tweaks
GNU LibreJS for most Fedora users might be more than what most people expect.
The privacy extension along with DuckDuckGo provides anonymity for searches.
As add-ons one or all these can be disabled by the user.
Since it is recently added to Fedora and version 31 was recently updated from version 24, why not update the package for Fedora 21 and promote it instead since it offers an experience that is similar to Firefox users may expect while promoting privacy in contrast to the recent version of Firefox being debated.
Enjoy your day ahead,
Abdur-Rahman Morgan
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:devel@lists.fedoraproject.org> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
> This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers > are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or > permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they > are not. Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
First, that's not quite true. Firefox does a call home first, where Mozilla will then determine your location from your IP (and possibly other data presented to them in the future), in order to present you with ads. As I understand it, it will do this the first time you open a new tab, before you even navigate to any site (such as about:config).
I don't consider my IP address a call to home. Every website you visit records your IP, so it's hardly sensitive data. Even Gnome checks my IP's location to fix my timezone.
Second, a user can easily accidentally click on ad, since it is mixed among other tiles, with the user's browsing habits.
And a user may accidentally start searching on the Google search box before she realizes that she sends data to Google "as she types" (that's how you get recommendations).
Again, this thing we discuss is already happening on Gnome Shell. Type "twitter" on your Gnome's search box. And I don't think there is a way currently to disable this. So please get your facts straight before start suggesting we change default browser.
On Mon, 2014-11-17 at 11:37 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
I don't consider my IP address a call to home. [...] Even Gnome checks my IP's location to fix my timezone.
Not by default, you have to enable this explicitly.
Second, a user can easily accidentally click on ad, since it is mixed among other tiles, with the user's browsing habits.
And a user may accidentally start searching on the Google search box before she realizes that she sends data to Google "as she types" (that's how you get recommendations).
Indeed, this is in Firefox though, which is the application people are saying they'd like to change, so it stops doing that without explicit user opt-in.
Again, this thing we discuss is already happening on Gnome Shell. Type "twitter" on your Gnome's search box.
I'm pretty confident that no network query is done when you search for that, and that instead GNOME Software searches in its local metadata cache.
Nothing outside of your own computer knows that you searched for "twitter" in the GNOME search box.
And I don't think there is a way currently to disable this. So please get your facts straight before start suggesting we change default browser.
All examples you have given of such opt-out network calls are either in Firefox or incorrect.
So maybe there is a need to change something in the Firefox default configuration after all? :)
On 11/17/2014 11:47 AM, Mathieu Bridon wrote:
On Mon, 2014-11-17 at 11:37 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
I don't consider my IP address a call to home. [...] Even Gnome checks my IP's location to fix my timezone.
Not by default, you have to enable this explicitly.
True, as you also have to explicitly click a tile to send data to Mozilla. But the main point here was that your IP (the only thing Firefox gets before you click anything) is not sensitive data.
Second, a user can easily accidentally click on ad, since it is mixed among other tiles, with the user's browsing habits.
And a user may accidentally start searching on the Google search box before she realizes that she sends data to Google "as she types" (that's how you get recommendations).
Indeed, this is in Firefox though, which is the application people are saying they'd like to change, so it stops doing that without explicit user opt-in.
No. We are talking about the tiles. I didn't see anyone suggesting we remove Google search. It's like the tiles feature crossed a line, which is far from truth.
Again, this thing we discuss is already happening on Gnome Shell. Type "twitter" on your Gnome's search box.
I'm pretty confident that no network query is done when you search for that, and that instead GNOME Software searches in its local metadata cache.
I'm talking about the "advertisement" part. Some people seem to be bothered by this alone. Tiles feature indeed promotes some websites, but we already do that.
All examples you have given of such opt-out network calls are either in Firefox or incorrect.
So maybe there is a need to change something in the Firefox default configuration after all? :)
I'm not much in favor of that, since that's the way this open source project gets revenues, but that could be indeed a first step. And I don't think we'll have any problems with the branding. But changing default browser is a totally different discussion.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 12:05:35 +0200, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
No. We are talking about the tiles. I didn't see anyone suggesting we remove Google search. It's like the tiles feature crossed a line, which is far from truth.
Firefox is really not set up with privacy as a high priority. Some bad things it does from a privacy perspective are:
If you type a name in the url bar and send, if the name dosn't match a domain google is contacted. (And it is google even if you have some other search engine set.)
OSCP is used to check for certificate revocations. For some threat models this cure is worse than the disease. There should be an easy way to disable this.
There is not a way to disable fetching all offsite references that aren't whitelisted. There is a hard way to do this for images, but there does not appear to be a way to do this for other object types.
The initial initial page is not set to about:blank, so that some site will be contacted (I think it is a Fedora page now.) before you have a chance to set it to about:blank in firefox. (It is possible to change this outside of Firefox, but it is hard.)
When firefox has a version update mozilla is contacted to present you with the release notes for the new version. It is possible to disable this, but it isn't really obvious how. (Even if you have done it before.)
Javascript is not easy to disable without installing a third party plugin, and the way that plugin works still leaves some exposure to javascript related issues.
There is a safe browsing feature that also will phone home.
If you look at the about:config menu you will see lots of URLs and it isn't clear when these URLs are used in many cases.
The referer header is sent by default. It isn't obvious how to disable that.
It isn't obvious how to disable remotes sites storing data locally. This feature can be used like cookies and should be easily controllable.
Am 17.11.2014 um 14:41 schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
Firefox is really not set up with privacy as a high priority. Some bad things it does from a privacy perspective are:
If you type a name in the url bar and send, if the name dosn't match a domain google is contacted. (And it is google even if you have some other search engine set.)
OSCP is used to check for certificate revocations. For some threat models this cure is worse than the disease. There should be an easy way to disable this.
not such problem if more sites would be configured properly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCSP_stapling
Javascript is not easy to disable without installing a third party plugin, and the way that plugin works still leaves some exposure to javascript related issues.
and everytime a newspaper recommends to disable it weeks later we got complaints that some forms don't work because tech to make it harder submit them automated until analyze what JS actions are expected
The referer header is sent by default. It isn't obvious how to disable that
please don't propose disable the Referer globally a samrt default would be https://addons.mozilla.org/DE/firefox/addon/smart-referer/ to send it only to the same domain
as example i require a referrer for captchas from the own domain to make it harder embed the captcha into some porn site and let users type it in
everytime when people come out with "how to disable referrer, javascript and the useragent" they have no clue what harm they are doing for sane websites wich try to protect themself and their owners from automated attacks / junk
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 15:06:21 +0100, Reindl Harald h.reindl@thelounge.net wrote:
Am 17.11.2014 um 14:41 schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
Firefox is really not set up with privacy as a high priority. Some bad things it does from a privacy perspective are:
If you type a name in the url bar and send, if the name dosn't match a domain google is contacted. (And it is google even if you have some other search engine set.)
OSCP is used to check for certificate revocations. For some threat models this cure is worse than the disease. There should be an easy way to disable this.
not such problem if more sites would be configured properly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCSP_stapling
That does sound like an improvement, but I haven't run across an easy way to enable that while disabling normal OCSP.
Javascript is not easy to disable without installing a third party plugin, and the way that plugin works still leaves some exposure to javascript related issues.
and everytime a newspaper recommends to disable it weeks later we got complaints that some forms don't work because tech to make it harder submit them automated until analyze what JS actions are expected
javascript is way too powerful to leave on for any old web site. Most web sites way over use it. Yes it is needed for web sites that are really applications, but most websites could be set up so they are usable without it. They just don't bother.
The referer header is sent by default. It isn't obvious how to disable that
please don't propose disable the Referer globally a samrt default would be https://addons.mozilla.org/DE/firefox/addon/smart-referer/ to send it only to the same domain
Having to install a third party package to do this doesn't make it simple. This feature should be built in.
Some people may not want to supply referer headers when moving around within sites. For that there should be a per domain override similar to cookies.
everytime when people come out with "how to disable referrer, javascript and the useragent" they have no clue what harm they are doing for sane websites wich try to protect themself and their owners from automated attacks / junk
Web sites should work just fine without a supplied user agent. If they don't, they are broken. bots can forge common user agent strings easily, relying on checking for user agent for security purposes is silly. A number of sites think there are only 3 or 4 different browers and refuse to work if you aren't using one of them. Other web sites aren't designed to handle the optional user agent header not being supplied and will break needlessly.
Am 17.11.2014 um 15:28 schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 15:06:21 +0100, Reindl Harald h.reindl@thelounge.net wrote:
Am 17.11.2014 um 14:41 schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
The referer header is sent by default. It isn't obvious how to disable that
please don't propose disable the Referer globally a samrt default would be https://addons.mozilla.org/DE/firefox/addon/smart-referer/ to send it only to the same domain
Having to install a third party package to do this doesn't make it simple. This feature should be built in.
agreed - please try to convience Mozilla for that change instead propose send none at all
Some people may not want to supply referer headers when moving around within sites. For that there should be a per domain override similar to cookies.
everytime when people come out with "how to disable referrer, javascript and the useragent" they have no clue what harm they are doing for sane websites wich try to protect themself and their owners from automated attacks / junk
Web sites should work just fine without a supplied user agent. If they don't, they are broken. bots can forge common user agent strings easily, relying on checking for user agent for security purposes is silly
i really do not need here to explain over a lot of text how you can *improve* the security of froms meaning "make it harder to submit them automated"
number of sites think there are only 3 or 4 different browers and refuse to work if you aren't using one of them. Other web sites aren't designed to handle the optional user agent header not being supplied and will break needlessly
and a number of sites works around horrible browser bugs of old client software which sadly exists (the more business related a website is that more stone old clients are coming you can't refuse)
it would be way off-topic to explain what workarounds i needed to implement based on the user-agent to not hurt standard conform browsers and if it is only for image silders *only and really only* for MSIE8 add a ?random=time() to URL's because the cached ones break while other browsers happily can cache them instead load again and again the same stuff
if you ever worked more than 10 years in producing standard conform websites working on *any* browsers you would know what i mean
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 07:41:22AM -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 12:05:35 +0200, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
No. We are talking about the tiles. I didn't see anyone suggesting we remove Google search. It's like the tiles feature crossed a line, which is far from truth.
Firefox is really not set up with privacy as a high priority. Some bad things it does from a privacy perspective are:
If you type a name in the url bar and send, if the name dosn't match a domain google is contacted. (And it is google even if you have some other search engine set.)
OSCP is used to check for certificate revocations. For some threat models this cure is worse than the disease. There should be an easy way to disable this.
There is not a way to disable fetching all offsite references that aren't whitelisted. There is a hard way to do this for images, but there does not appear to be a way to do this for other object types.
The initial initial page is not set to about:blank, so that some site will be contacted (I think it is a Fedora page now.) before you have a chance to set it to about:blank in firefox. (It is possible to change this outside of Firefox, but it is hard.)
When firefox has a version update mozilla is contacted to present you with the release notes for the new version. It is possible to disable this, but it isn't really obvious how. (Even if you have done it before.)
Javascript is not easy to disable without installing a third party plugin, and the way that plugin works still leaves some exposure to javascript related issues.
There is a safe browsing feature that also will phone home.
If you look at the about:config menu you will see lots of URLs and it isn't clear when these URLs are used in many cases.
The referer header is sent by default. It isn't obvious how to disable that.
It isn't obvious how to disable remotes sites storing data locally. This feature can be used like cookies and should be easily controllable.
This is a good analysis. However I hope people don't take away from it "OMG there's nothing we can do". We can work on making it better incrementally, and fixing this advert tabs thing is a good place to start.
Also having the Fedora policy be clear and unambiguous. Who would deal with that? FESCO? The Board (or whatever it's called these days)?
Rich.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 02:32:39PM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
Also having the Fedora policy be clear and unambiguous. Who would deal with that? FESCO? The Board (or whatever it's called these days)?
FESCo for the technical side, board for high-level guidance.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 12:05:35PM +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
True, as you also have to explicitly click a tile to send data to Mozilla.
Well, I don't think the act of hiding/closing an ad (by clicking on the 'x' attached to it) can be reasonably interpreted as informed consent. Yet, it is explicitly listed among the tracked actions according to what Darren Herman apparently told the advertiser community.
No. We are talking about the tiles. I didn't see anyone suggesting we remove Google search. It's like the tiles feature crossed a line, which is far from truth.
I'm not sure about that. Besides the feature itself, there's also the issue of the language used to explain it. Describing the placement of advertisements as an "enhancement" to users, in my opinion, definitely crosses the line to dishonesty and bullshitting of users.
Really, this stuff is communicated in a form of double-speak marketing verbiage that I'm just not used to hear in communicating with open source projects. Read the initial blog posts about it.
I'm talking about the "advertisement" part. Some people seem to be bothered by this alone. Tiles feature indeed promotes some websites, but we already do that.
No, actually we don't. We promote websites because we honestly think they're useful, not because we're paid to do so.
I don't think we should drop Firefox from the default installation. I really like it, despite something at Mozilla going terribly wrong lately. I do think this "feature" needs to be shipped as off by default, though.
I'm talking about the "advertisement" part. Some people seem to be bothered by this alone. Tiles feature indeed promotes some websites, but we already do that.
No, actually we don't. We promote websites because we honestly think they're useful, not because we're paid to do so.
That's irrelevant. Paid or not, promoting websites through tiles or gnome-shell is the same form of advertisement.
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 11:15 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
I'm talking about the "advertisement" part. Some people seem to be bothered by this alone. Tiles feature indeed promotes some websites, but we already do that.
No, actually we don't. We promote websites because we honestly think they're useful, not because we're paid to do so.
That's irrelevant. Paid or not, promoting websites through tiles or gnome-shell is the same form of advertisement.
Money is not irrelevant. Paid advertising is how we wound up with pop-ups, hover ads, etc. The question is whether or not we can trust Mozilla to steer clear of such things. So far there seems to be no reason to trust Mozilla -- the ads are opt-out, they only sometimes respect DNT, and they are being pushed despite the backlash from Mozilla's community.
At the very least Fedora should turn this feature off. My computer should only become a platform for displaying commercial ads if I explicitly opt-in to such a feature.
-- Ben
On 11/18/2014 02:55 PM, Benjamin Kreuter wrote:
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 11:15 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
I'm talking about the "advertisement" part. Some people seem to be bothered by this alone. Tiles feature indeed promotes some websites, but we already do that.
No, actually we don't. We promote websites because we honestly think they're useful, not because we're paid to do so.
That's irrelevant. Paid or not, promoting websites through tiles or gnome-shell is the same form of advertisement.
Money is not irrelevant. Paid advertising is how we wound up with pop-ups, hover ads, etc. The question is whether or not we can trust Mozilla to steer clear of such things. So far there seems to be no reason to trust Mozilla -- the ads are opt-out, they only sometimes respect DNT, and they are being pushed despite the backlash from Mozilla's community.
This is a moral judgment, so it's irrelevant for making a policy decision (from Fedora's point of view). Money or not, we need a consistent policy on advertisements for all upstream.
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 15:12 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
On 11/18/2014 02:55 PM, Benjamin Kreuter wrote:
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 11:15 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
I'm talking about the "advertisement" part. Some people seem to be bothered by this alone. Tiles feature indeed promotes some websites, but we already do that.
No, actually we don't. We promote websites because we honestly think they're useful, not because we're paid to do so.
That's irrelevant. Paid or not, promoting websites through tiles or gnome-shell is the same form of advertisement.
Money is not irrelevant. Paid advertising is how we wound up with pop-ups, hover ads, etc. The question is whether or not we can trust Mozilla to steer clear of such things. So far there seems to be no reason to trust Mozilla -- the ads are opt-out, they only sometimes respect DNT, and they are being pushed despite the backlash from Mozilla's community.
This is a moral judgment, so it's irrelevant for making a policy decision (from Fedora's point of view).
As a community, we can certainly decide to base our policies on moral judgments we make, just as we can decide to base them on technical judgments. (or even a mix of both)
For example, we don't allow nonfree software in Fedora, and I for one certainly hope it is not **entirely** a technical decision.
On November 18, 2014 7:08:47 PM EET, Benjamin Kreuter ben.kreuter@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 15:12 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
This is a moral judgment, so it's irrelevant for making a policy decision (from Fedora's point of view). Money or not, we need a consistent policy on advertisements for all upstream.
How about an opt-in requirement?
Yes, that would make more sense. But I didn't opt-in to see commercial websites on gnome-shell either (and I can't even opt-out).
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On November 18, 2014 7:08:47 PM EET, Benjamin Kreuter ben.kreuter@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 15:12 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
This is a moral judgment, so it's irrelevant for making a policy decision (from Fedora's point of view). Money or not, we need a consistent policy on advertisements for all upstream.
How about an opt-in requirement?
Yes, that would make more sense. But I didn't opt-in to see commercial websites on gnome-shell either (and I can't even opt-out).
You can disable the search provider in Settings -> Search
On 11/18/2014 07:21 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On November 18, 2014 7:08:47 PM EET, Benjamin Kreuter ben.kreuter@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 15:12 +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
This is a moral judgment, so it's irrelevant for making a policy decision (from Fedora's point of view). Money or not, we need a consistent policy on advertisements for all upstream.
How about an opt-in requirement?
Yes, that would make more sense. But I didn't opt-in to see commercial websites on gnome-shell either (and I can't even opt-out).
You can disable the search provider in Settings -> Search
I'll have to completely disable Software as search provider, which I don't want to do. Unless I'm missing something.
On Tue, 2014-11-18 at 17:14 +0000, Nikos Roussos wrote:
On November 18, 2014 7:08:47 PM EET, Benjamin Kreuter ben.kreuter@gmail.com wrote:
How about an opt-in requirement?
Yes, that would make more sense. But I didn't opt-in to see commercial websites on gnome-shell either (and I can't even opt-out).
OK, so that would also be turned off by default. Is there some reason why that would be a bad thing for Fedora users or developers?
-- Ben
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:15:33AM +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
No, actually we don't. We promote websites because we honestly think they're useful, not because we're paid to do so.
That's irrelevant. Paid or not, promoting websites through tiles or gnome-shell is the same form of advertisement.
I disagree. Think about it: imagine I told you as a friend how I was at some pub yesterday and enthusiastically rave about how it was totally awesome and that you should go there, too. Now, in the one case I told you this because I'm honestly convinced that it would be fun for you to go there and that you'd like it. In the other case I did it because the owner paid me for it. Really no difference? I don't think so.
On 11/19/2014 12:34 AM, Lars Seipel wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:15:33AM +0200, Nikos Roussos wrote:
No, actually we don't. We promote websites because we honestly think they're useful, not because we're paid to do so.
That's irrelevant. Paid or not, promoting websites through tiles or gnome-shell is the same form of advertisement.
I disagree. Think about it: imagine I told you as a friend how I was at some pub yesterday and enthusiastically rave about how it was totally awesome and that you should go there, too. Now, in the one case I told you this because I'm honestly convinced that it would be fun for you to go there and that you'd like it. In the other case I did it because the owner paid me for it. Really no difference? I don't think so.
From Fedora perspective there is no difference. What if an upstream doesn't have public financial records. How we would we know if it gets paid for promoting 3rd parties? Investigate? This is paranoid and ridiculous.
Nikos Roussos wrote:
And a user may accidentally start searching on the Google search box before she realizes that she sends data to Google "as she types" (that's how you get recommendations).
That's also a questionable "feature". Such a text box should not send anything before you confirm it.
(And I don't like separate search boxes as a UI element to begin with, I like Konqueror's "web shortcuts" feature, where I can just type gg: and my search query in the address bar.)
Kevin Kofler
That's also a questionable "feature". Such a text box should not send anything before you confirm it.
Perhaps as part of the firewall installation step, the user could be given a list of sites that their PC may "call home" to - including official repos - and let them opt-in or opt-out accordingly. If we block, say, *.mozilla.com at the firewall level, there's no chance that firefox will call home before the user has a chance to set their preferences.
Of course, we'd need an obvious way to let them opt-in later, after they've set their preferences, else "why doesn't google work?" and "why can't I yum update?" will become FAQs.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 9:32 PM, DJ Delorie dj@redhat.com wrote:
That's also a questionable "feature". Such a text box should not send anything before you confirm it.
Perhaps as part of the firewall installation step, the user could be given a list of sites that their PC may "call home" to - including official repos - and let them opt-in or opt-out accordingly. If we block, say, *.mozilla.com at the firewall level, there's no chance that firefox will call home before the user has a chance to set their preferences.
Ugh .. sorry but that's the worst suggestion so far. No image the user goes to http://addons.mozilla.org/ to install addons ... it won't work. (just one random example but you get the idea).
Ugh .. sorry but that's the worst suggestion so far. No image the user goes to http://addons.mozilla.org/ to install addons ... it won't work. (just one random example but you get the idea).
I imagine the user would change the start page to about:blank, then open the firewall, then everything works as normal.
Of course, this only works for single-user machines. A multi-user machine wouldn't protect the second user to run Firefox.
On 17 November 2014 13:57, DJ Delorie dj@redhat.com wrote:
Ugh .. sorry but that's the worst suggestion so far. No image the user goes to http://addons.mozilla.org/ to install addons ... it won't work. (just one random example but you get the idea).
I imagine the user would change the start page to about:blank, then open the firewall, then everything works as normal.
Of course, this only works for single-user machines. A multi-user machine wouldn't protect the second user to run Firefox.
In the days of CDN's and other tricks to deal with no more IPv4 ips you can't block *.mozilla.org without also blocking everything from CNN to your local bank. The ips may change all the time or they may be leased to someplace for a short time.
-- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 9:57 PM, DJ Delorie dj@redhat.com wrote:
Ugh .. sorry but that's the worst suggestion so far. No image the user goes to http://addons.mozilla.org/ to install addons ... it won't work. (just one random example but you get the idea).
I imagine the user would change the start page to about:blank, then open the firewall, then everything works as normal.
Of course, this only works for single-user machines. A multi-user machine wouldn't protect the second user to run Firefox.
Not every user understands the connection between "website does not work" -> "firewall configuration"
Am 17.11.2014 um 22:16 schrieb drago01:
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 9:57 PM, DJ Delorie dj@redhat.com wrote:
Ugh .. sorry but that's the worst suggestion so far. No image the user goes to http://addons.mozilla.org/ to install addons ... it won't work. (just one random example but you get the idea).
I imagine the user would change the start page to about:blank, then open the firewall, then everything works as normal.
Of course, this only works for single-user machines. A multi-user machine wouldn't protect the second user to run Firefox.
Not every user understands the connection between "website does not work" -> "firewall configuration"
not a single "non-tech" user does
whatever that discussion is worth: throw away firefox because a issue you have on 90% of all websites and force users to use a different browser don't work
in the best case they download the binary from mozilla.org because they want it (especially users working on more than one OS trying to have the same software whenever possible on all of them) or ask yourself if a different distribution works better (better from the users point of view)
you need to outweight the win and the damage
these days you have two user groups: * tech users who cares: set about:blank * normal users -> don't care
if somebody removes Firefox from the repos i just continue to use it without packages - no auto updates or make the install dir writeable for everyone - the second option throws away security for excatly what benefit?
surely - *i can* care about that and call FF one a week for update it, the majority of users won't do that without any "but", "or" and "if"
Not every user understands the connection between "website does not work" -> "firewall configuration"
True, which means that we have to use words that they *do* understand.
For extra coolness, a per-user firewall and some way of popping up a query dialog when they violate a firewall rule. "We detected you're trying to access *mozilla.com, which is currently blocked due to your privacy choices. Would you like to enable access to *mozilla.com at this time?"
Not that I expect such a tool to be practical, if even possible... ;-)
Am 17.11.2014 um 22:25 schrieb DJ Delorie:
Not every user understands the connection between "website does not work" -> "firewall configuration"
True, which means that we have to use words that they *do* understand
forget it
really, after working more than a decade with every sort of users from high technical ones to just a ordinary user: forget it, you can use whatever words you want - nobody will read them
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Reindl Harald h.reindl@thelounge.net wrote:
forget it
Yup, that really perfectly sums it up. The introduction of ads by Mozilla breaks no Fedora policy, period, end of story. Notwithstanding the fact that they are unobtrusive and ridiculously simple to disable. The only viable real world free alternative is the Chromium project and it hasn't yet made it into the official Fedora repository. The only result from removing Firefox would be to unnecessarily piss off a vast number of users.
If anything, the resources and angst over Firefox ads should be redirected to assist in cleaning up whatever mess is preventing Chromium from finally getting into the official Fedora repositories.
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/16/2014 08:24 PM, Christopher wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad <mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> wrote:
This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they are not.
Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
Even if not sent to Mozilla, it's accessible to the advertisers. I could spend a long time explaining the various means, that web advertisers track their users, ranging from crafting URL's and metadata about the particular requests to 'web bugs', those little one pixel transparent gifs so ubiquitous on the plethora of ad.doublelick.net websites with fake names used to collect the data.
On 11/18/2014 08:24 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/16/2014 08:24 PM, Christopher wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad <mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> wrote:
This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they are not.
Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
Even if not sent to Mozilla, it's accessible to the advertisers. I could spend a long time explaining the various means, that web advertisers track their users, ranging from crafting URL's and metadata about the particular requests to 'web bugs', those little one pixel transparent gifs so ubiquitous on the plethora of ad.doublelick.net websites with fake names used to collect the data.
The tiles are coming from Mozilla. So yes please explain how the advertisers can track me through them if I don't click them.
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 4:17 AM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/18/2014 08:24 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/16/2014 08:24 PM, Christopher wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad <mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> wrote:
This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they are not.
Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
Even if not sent to Mozilla, it's accessible to the advertisers. I could spend a long time explaining the various means, that web advertisers track their users, ranging from crafting URL's and metadata about the particular requests to 'web bugs', those little one pixel transparent gifs so ubiquitous on the plethora of ad.doublelick.net websites with fake names used to collect the data.
The tiles are coming from Mozilla. So yes please explain how the advertisers can track me through them if I don't click them.
Much depends on what's in the tile. For example an embedded 1 pixel transparent gif, commonly known as a "web bug", and loaded from a third party web repository such as one of the many misleading aliases for ad.doubleclick.net, is one of the favorites. Another is crafting the URL used by the displayed advertising page to contain metadata about the browsing client. Unless the tiles are vetted by, hosted by, and have their content reviewed and manually sanitized by someone both paranoid and content over at Mozilla, it's safe to assume there is tracking information embedded in the tiles. The tracking information has become ubiquitous in far too much web content, especially in paid advertising content.
I'm afraid it's not reasonable to assume that just because Mozilla is providing the hooks to publish web ads that those web ads do not, themselves, collect and use personal user data, especially the client IP and browsing history.
Nico Kadel-Garcia
On 11/23/2014 05:50 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
The tiles are coming from Mozilla. So yes please explain how the advertisers can track me through them if I don't click them.
Much depends on what's in the tile. For example an embedded 1 pixel transparent gif, commonly known as a "web bug", and loaded from a third party web repository such as one of the many misleading aliases for ad.doubleclick.net, is one of the favorites. Another is crafting the URL used by the displayed advertising page to contain metadata about the browsing client. Unless the tiles are vetted by, hosted by, and have their content reviewed and manually sanitized by someone both paranoid and content over at Mozilla, it's safe to assume there is tracking information embedded in the tiles. The tracking information has become ubiquitous in far too much web content, especially in paid advertising content.
I'm afraid it's not reasonable to assume that just because Mozilla is providing the hooks to publish web ads that those web ads do not, themselves, collect and use personal user data, especially the client IP and browsing history.
The Ads title looks like:
<div class="newtab-site" draggable="true" type="sponsored"> <a class="newtab-link" title="CITIZENFOUR https://citizenfourfilm.com/" href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/"></a> <input class="newtab-control newtab-control-pin" type="button" title="Pin this site at its current position"></input> <input class="newtab-control newtab-control-block" type="button" title="Remove this site"></input> <span class="newtab-sponsored"></span>
So Mozilla provides offline thumbnail of the page and URL, nothing else. The ads work completely offline.
ma.
On 11/23/2014 06:50 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 4:17 AM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/18/2014 08:24 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Nikos Roussos comzeradd@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 11/16/2014 08:24 PM, Christopher wrote:
On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Mustafa Muhammad <mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com mailto:mustafaa.alhamdaani@gmail.com> wrote:
This doesn't seem relevant to this discussion, unless Fedora browsers are automatically, and without the user's explicit knowledge or permission, navigating to Google's search engine, which (AFAICT) they are not.
Same happens with these tiles. No data is sent back to Mozilla unless you *choose* to click one of the promoted tiles.
Even if not sent to Mozilla, it's accessible to the advertisers. I could spend a long time explaining the various means, that web advertisers track their users, ranging from crafting URL's and metadata about the particular requests to 'web bugs', those little one pixel transparent gifs so ubiquitous on the plethora of ad.doublelick.net websites with fake names used to collect the data.
The tiles are coming from Mozilla. So yes please explain how the advertisers can track me through them if I don't click them.
Much depends on what's in the tile. For example an embedded 1 pixel transparent gif, commonly known as a "web bug", and loaded from a third party web repository such as one of the many misleading aliases for ad.doubleclick.net, is one of the favorites. Another is crafting the URL used by the displayed advertising page to contain metadata about the browsing client. Unless the tiles are vetted by, hosted by, and have their content reviewed and manually sanitized by someone both paranoid and content over at Mozilla, it's safe to assume there is tracking information embedded in the tiles. The tracking information has become ubiquitous in far too much web content, especially in paid advertising content.
I'm afraid it's not reasonable to assume that just because Mozilla is providing the hooks to publish web ads that those web ads do not, themselves, collect and use personal user data, especially the client IP and browsing history.
You don't have to assume. Firefox is open source so you can just check the code before spreading FUD.
Am 24.11.2014 um 11:41 schrieb Nikos Roussos:
On 11/23/2014 06:50 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
I'm afraid it's not reasonable to assume that just because Mozilla is providing the hooks to publish web ads that those web ads do not, themselves, collect and use personal user data, especially the client IP and browsing history.
You don't have to assume. Firefox is open source so you can just check the code before spreading FUD
and *that* is the real problem of the whole thread: 90% are based on assumptions and opinions instead of verified facts which is very strange when talking about open source
On 2014-11-24, 11:02 GMT, Reindl Harald wrote:
and *that* is the real problem of the whole thread: 90% are based on assumptions and opinions instead of verified facts which is very strange when talking about open source
Or without checking tons of information provided on the Mozilla website for that matter.
Matěj
Mustafa Muhammad wrote:
The "ads" are not intrusive, they don't collect personally identifiable data, and can be disabled with a selection from a button on the start page! See: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848017/how-to-get-rid-of-firefoxs-new-ads-on...
The instructions start with "open a new tab", so you have to view the ads to disable them!
Kevin Kofler
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 02:25:48PM +0100, Lars Seipel wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
So, here's a (genuine) question: how is this behavior different, from a Fedora policy point of view, than if the default for new tabs were to go to https://start.mozilla.org/, and Mozilla ran advertisements on that page?
On 11/17/2014 04:14 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 02:25:48PM +0100, Lars Seipel wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
So, here's a (genuine) question: how is this behavior different, from a Fedora policy point of view, than if the default for new tabs were to go to https://start.mozilla.org/, and Mozilla ran advertisements on that page?
IMO, the default of https://start.mozilla.org violates fedora policies and ought to be changed.
It's a phone-home function, which can only be opted out by digging into preferences.
Ralf
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 07:08:36PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
So, here's a (genuine) question: how is this behavior different, from a Fedora policy point of view, than if the default for new tabs were to go to https://start.mozilla.org/, and Mozilla ran advertisements on that page?
IMO, the default of https://start.mozilla.org violates fedora policies and ought to be changed.
Ralf, what policies are you referring to here?
People keep bringing up policy violations, but when asked you either get "crickets" or the subject slightly changed. The only policy that I could find that might apply would be Fedora Forbidden Items https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items?rd=ForbiddenItems and if you read it, you'll find that it absolutely does not apply in this situation.
Now, let's be somewhat pragmatic here... you're going to get rid of Firefox (which doesn't violate any Fedora policies) and replace it with exactly what? Konqueror, Web (the browser formally known as Epiphany), Midori, etc.? Really? Does anyone seriously believe that these products would be embraced by our user base? Someone mentioned IceCat earlier... I installed the current version in the Fedora 20 repository and let's just say that it had a few formatting issues and leave it at that. The vast majority of folks are just going to roll their eyes and install Firefox or Google Chrome.
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 11:00 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 07:08:36PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
So, here's a (genuine) question: how is this behavior different, from a Fedora policy point of view, than if the default for new tabs were to go to https://start.mozilla.org/, and Mozilla ran advertisements on that page?
IMO, the default of https://start.mozilla.org violates fedora policies and ought to be changed.
Ralf, what policies are you referring to here?
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
On 11/17/2014 09:23 PM, Chuck Anderson wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 02:25:48PM +0100, Lars Seipel wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
I started seeing the advertisement tiles on my existing profile.
It looks like the 'advertisement tiles' come up even on old profiles, if the default start page had been left unmodified. If the default start(home) page had earlier been explicitly set to blank or to some other site, as I had done in one of my systems, the 'advertisement tiles' do not come up, unless you go click that 'gear' on the top right in a tab, and select 'enhanced' or 'classic'.
By the way, anyone know why 'enhanced' and 'classic' behave the same ?
Hi,
It looks like the recent Firefox "Adds" does not break any Fedora rules so it's perfectly ok to ship it "as is".
The H264 codec download feature break the Fedora law and has been removed from Fedora. When Fedora rules the Adds out of the apps it will be removed from FF immediately. Until that it's a grey zone and may or may not be removed/adjusted.
I understand you want to promote Fedora/Gnome on the titles instead of some adds by Mozilla (no matter if it helps Mozilla to fund the browser development). There's a option to pin more tabs here (on just the Fedora start-up page) so we can provide our own set of start-up pages. Those should be obviously well selected and confirmed by Fedora officials. Please post your suggestions to #BZ and file a FESCO ticket for that.
Another way how to promote Fedora is to set "welcome" page to start.fedoraproject.org. It appears when Firefox starts on fresh profile and can point people to the Fedora project.
So let's start with this one, add the "Fedora titles" and discuss if apps in Fedora are or are not allowed to show any Adds.
ma.
On 11/15/2014 02:25 PM, Lars Seipel wrote:
So Mozilla has recently gone live with its advertisement tiles on the "New Tab" page. Only newly created profiles get to see this stuff.
On a pristine F21 install using Gnome, when first launching Firefox, users are presented with a number of tiles, depending on screen size. One of those is a so-called "sponsored" tile chosen from a range of available advertisements (e.g. for booking.com, there's also one for the Snowden movie), apparently depending on geographical location.
When this "feature" got originally announced[1], there was a discussion on -devel if this kind of stuff is really appropriate for Fedora.
Some time later Mozilla seemed to have canceled the feature, quoting "That’s not going to happen. That’s not who we are at Mozilla." as one of the reasons[2].
Apparently, they (again) reconsidered, pushing the feature to nightlies a few months ago. Well, it now hit the stable branch and, therefore, Fedora.
This is how Mozilla pitches the feature to advertisers[3]:
To support ad personalization, Mozilla created an internal data system that aggregates user information while stripping out personally identifiable information. Mozilla can track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins. Its advertising partners are also privy to that data.
Personally, I don't think that showing advertisements on the free software desktop is appropriate. Our users are supposed to be able to fully trust our software. That's one of our most-often touted strenghts. I don't think the ability to "track impressions, clicks, and the number of ads a user hides or pins" is something that is compatible with that, regardless of this data being tied to "personally identifiable information" or not.
Firefox's behaviour is probably nothing extraordinary on the other platforms Mozilla is targeting. Compared to the prevalent attitude of proprietary vendors, especially on mobile, it doesn't sound that bad anymore. I don't think that's a suitable scale for Fedora, though.
From a user perspective, it's not that hard to disable the feature. Upon first seeing that page a tooltip is shown to hint at the possibility. Users can choose between three modes, "Enhanced", "Classic" and "Blank". Contrary to what is stated in the Mozilla kb[4], the only one that actually disables the ads is "Blank", which is equal to setting the new tab page to about:blank.
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformatio... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/ [3] http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/mozilla-finally-releases-its-b... [4] https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_enhanced-tiles
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 14:58:41 +0100, Martin Stransky stransky@redhat.com wrote:
Another way how to promote Fedora is to set "welcome" page to start.fedoraproject.org. It appears when Firefox starts on fresh profile and can point people to the Fedora project.
We shouldn't be doing that either. Any welcome page initially displayed should be from a copy on the installation, not something fetched from a remote server.
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 14:58:41 +0100, Martin Stransky stransky@redhat.com wrote:
Another way how to promote Fedora is to set "welcome" page to start.fedoraproject.org. It appears when Firefox starts on fresh profile and can point people to the Fedora project.
We shouldn't be doing that either. Any welcome page initially displayed should be from a copy on the installation, not something fetched from a remote server.
That's getting into the "paranoid" area .. where do you draw the line? The fedora project (and lots of its mirros)also gets your ip when the system checks for updates,
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 18:16:12 +0100, drago01 drago01@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
We shouldn't be doing that either. Any welcome page initially displayed should be from a copy on the installation, not something fetched from a remote server.
That's getting into the "paranoid" area .. where do you draw the line? The fedora project (and lots of its mirros)also gets your ip when the system checks for updates,
Mozilla is a third party. There is no reason that they should be contacted by default.
Even for mirrors, people run local mirrors. Not every installation contacts Fedora mirrors directly.
The cost of avoiding phoning home in tese cases is low. You can install a copy of the file locally and use a file: reference to it. The file can include a link to the source so that people can fetch a possibly more up to date version if they want.
Am 18.11.2014 um 18:29 schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 18:16:12 +0100, drago01 drago01@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
We shouldn't be doing that either. Any welcome page initially displayed should be from a copy on the installation, not something fetched from a remote server.
That's getting into the "paranoid" area .. where do you draw the line? The fedora project (and lots of its mirros)also gets your ip when the system checks for updates,
Mozilla is a third party. There is no reason that they should be contacted by default.
calling upstream "3rd party" is somehow strange most code in fedora is from 3rd party
if you don't trust the 3rd party you *really* need to review every single line of code
Even for mirrors, people run local mirrors. Not every installation contacts Fedora mirrors directly.
most of them for sure not because hide the IP
typically it's done because someone has to maintain 5, 10, 20, 100 machines and want to save time and/or bandwidth, maybe even combined with save ressources of the official mirrors
The cost of avoiding phoning home in tese cases is low. You can install a copy of the file locally and use a file: reference to it. The file can include a link to the source so that people can fetch a possibly more up to date version if they want.
nobody said anything against that
*but* please avoid FUD and paranoia and claim upstream unstrustable until you can prove that instead of assume it
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Reindl Harald h.reindl@thelounge.net wrote:
*but* please avoid FUD and paranoia and claim upstream unstrustable until you can prove that instead of assume it
Exactly! Thank you!
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 18:40:02 +0100, Reindl Harald h.reindl@thelounge.net wrote:
Am 18.11.2014 um 18:29 schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
Mozilla is a third party. There is no reason that they should be contacted by default.
calling upstream "3rd party" is somehow strange most code in fedora is from 3rd party
I am first party. Fedora is second party. I deal directly with Fedora. Mozilla is a third party. I don't deal with them.
if you don't trust the 3rd party you *really* need to review every single line of code
I expect Fedora to protect my interests, so I don't have to do code reviews. Clearly there are limits to that, but I except some risk in order to save time and money.
*but* please avoid FUD and paranoia and claim upstream unstrustable until you can prove that instead of assume it
I made no such claim. What I don't want to have to do is to have to trust them to be responsible about data they have no need for in the first place.
On Tue, 18 Nov 2014 08:00:35 -0600 Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 14:58:41 +0100, Martin Stransky stransky@redhat.com wrote:
Another way how to promote Fedora is to set "welcome" page to start.fedoraproject.org. It appears when Firefox starts on fresh profile and can point people to the Fedora project.
We shouldn't be doing that either. Any welcome page initially displayed should be from a copy on the installation, not something fetched from a remote server.
start.fedoraproject.org is actually a dynamic page, not something that could be repointed locally. At least as it's currently implemented.
kevin
What does the community think of it? Is it okay for our flagship applications to carry ads and report tracking data?
Can't we let the user to decide during the firstboot or Firefox first startup?
Since browsers already do the opt-out, we could do the same. This global OS setting would then apply on all apps. I believe there will be more than just the Firefox case soon.
I will always vote to opt-out, but there are maybe users who do not care. It's even worse. I know people who *want* to see advertisments. To us this sounds like extreme, but let's admit it - we are biased a bit.
On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 12:19:21PM +0100, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
Can't we let the user to decide during the firstboot or Firefox first startup?
Being bombarded with questions when you just want to get to using something isn't the best user experience, and I think in general something we've been trying to reduce.
Since browsers already do the opt-out, we could do the same. This global OS setting would then apply on all apps. I believe there will be more than just the Firefox case soon.
How would that be implemented? What would it apply to?
If there is an opt-out in the browser for receiving the advertising, Mozilla should educate users on that choice while making a case for why it needs the revenue from showing the ads.
"Accepting" the ads could be a good way for users to support Mozilla while not making an actual financial contribution. We all assume that the Google-search money collected by Mozilla makes other financial support unnecessary, and if that isn't true, Mozilla should lay that out.
Particularly after the recent CEO debacle, Mozilla needs to go the extra mile to consider its users and community. -- Steven Rosenberg http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog http://blogs.dailynews.com/click stevenhrosenberg@gmail.com steven@stevenrosenberg.net
On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 8:28 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 12:19:21PM +0100, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
Can't we let the user to decide during the firstboot or Firefox first startup?
Being bombarded with questions when you just want to get to using something isn't the best user experience, and I think in general something we've been trying to reduce.
Since browsers already do the opt-out, we could do the same. This global OS setting would then apply on all apps. I believe there will be more than just the Firefox case soon.
How would that be implemented? What would it apply to?
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Being bombarded with questions when you just want to get to using something isn't the best user experience, and I think in general something we've been trying to reduce.
This doesn't need to be must-choice. A checkbox won't hurt, but I am not UX expert. Having that said, this is not a valid point when I suggest not to do the decision for the user.
How would that be implemented? What would it apply to?
The firstboot script would drop a config value to the user home directory (touch ~/.no-ads) and call some kind of script distributed in a separate package that would re-configure all the programs to opt-out according to this setting. The first one would be Firefox. I am not aware of any other package in Fedora that have ads, but this way we could have a policy how to deal with those. Each package could drop a script that would do the work into let's say /etc/ads-opt-out.d/ or similar.
But if you'd ask me to do the decision for the user, I'd definitely respond with "no ads".