[Bug 1789850] Re: Advertising in the MOTD

[Steve Langasek]

Thank you for your feedback.  Taking your comments one-by-one:

> The previous report was about marketing/promotion of Ubuntu in the MOTD,
> however this report is to address new advertising in the MOTD. The MOTD
> should be reserved for vulnerabilities and other fixes

This was addressed in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-
files/+bug/1701068/comments/11 on the bug you referenced:

"* And sometimes, it's just a matter of presenting a fun fact. News from
the world of Ubuntu. Or even your own IT department. Such was the case
with the Silicon Valley / HBO message. It was just an interesting tidbit
of potpourri from the world of Ubuntu. Last week's message actually
announced an Ubuntu conference in Latin America. The week before, we
linked to an article asking for feedback on Kubuntu. Before that, we
announced the availability of Extended Security Maintenance updates for
12.04. And so on."

It is not the position of the team that this space is to be reserved
exclusively for communication around vulnerabilities.

You describe this as 'advertising'.  Generally speaking all of the
information that has been posted to motd.ubuntu.com constitutes
'advertising' of one form or another; advertising the existence of new
Ubuntu-related products, advertising of the Ubuntu team's response to
newsworthy vulnerabilities, advertising of miscellaneous "fun facts"
from the surrounding Ubuntu ecosystem.  So this is not per se a blocker
for inclusion of this particular blog entry.

> Can we discuss this? This absolutely sucks because it's an advert for a
> blog post that mostly has desktop IDE's and isn't even relevant for
> server users

I'm sorry that you didn't find this content interesting.  But the
standard for motd.ubuntu.com is not that it be interesting to any
particular user.  We believe there is significant overlap between
desktop and server users of Ubuntu, so even though users will not
normally see the motd on the desktop, it is interesting to share
information about desktop software (and in particular, developer-centric
software) in the motd that's shown on the server.

> *and* it's using a bit.ly link.

It's true that it is using a bit.ly link.  The motd.ubuntu.com messages
have consistently used link shorteners.  It's not clear to me what your
criticism is here.

> In a previous bug report[1] it was promised that everyone would watch
> what others are merging so how did this get through??

There is oversight by multiple people on the branch where these messages
are published.  The disconnect here seems to be that your expectations
for the contents of these messages don't match what the team considers
to be the standard to which we are reviewing.

-- 
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1789850

Title:
  Advertising in the MOTD

Status in update-motd package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  In a previous report you told us to report new bugs in ubuntu-motd,
  however ubuntu-bug doesn't allow this.

  The previous report was about marketing/promotion of Ubuntu in the
  MOTD, however this report is to address new advertising in the MOTD.
  The MOTD should be reserved for vulnerabilities and other fixes -
  instead I logged in this morning to find the following:

  "* Check out 6 great IDEs now available on Ubuntu. There may even be
     something worthwhile there for those crazy EMACS fans ;)

     - https://bit.ly/6-cool-IDEs"

  Can we discuss this? This absolutely sucks because it's an advert for
  a blog post that mostly has desktop IDE's and isn't even relevant for
  server users *and* it's using a bit.ly link. In a previous bug
  report[1] it was promised that everyone would watch what others are
  merging so how did this get through??

  [1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-
  files/+bug/1701068/comments/11

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
  Package: base-files 10.1ubuntu2.2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-1020.20-aws 4.15.18
  Uname: Linux 4.15.0-1020-aws x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Thu Aug 30 08:34:40 2018
  Dependencies:
   
  Ec2AMI: ami-0f7b7753aba0b7a5d
  Ec2AMIManifest: (unknown)
  Ec2AvailabilityZone: ap-northeast-2c
  Ec2InstanceType: m5.xlarge
  Ec2Kernel: unavailable
  Ec2Ramdisk: unavailable
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=xterm-256color
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=C.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: base-files
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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