[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu 12.10: advertising lenses

[Alan Pope]

On 24/09/12 19:25, Juergen Schinker wrote:
>> For some of this content, if a user clicks the item and purchases it, it
>> will generate affiliate revenue that we can invest back into the project
>> (in a similar way to how we generate revenue from the Firefox search
>> bar). We have found affiliate revenue to be a good method of helping us
>> to continue to invest in maturing and growing Ubuntu.
>
> I don't agree with this decision
>
> I was not aware of this and consider it esp dreadful to set this as default in Ubuntu 12.10.
>

You're aware of it now, mere days after it landed in the as-yet 
unreleased development version of Ubuntu, some four weeks before 12.10 
is released.

> Canonical could engage in other ways gaining Revenue than patronizing end-users....
>

Suggestions welcome. We'd love to hear them!

> As having Ubuntu on mobile devices i don't appreciate unwanted Traffic from/to Amazon
> refering to a high price on mobile data transfer...
>

We've been thinking hard about this particular issue and it's not 
straightforward to solve. Ideally NetworkManager should let us know when 
the user is on a non-unlimited connection, but that's not easy to 
determine. Especially when users have tethered to phones via a wifi, or 
are using a portable hotspot.

Patches welcome!

> A constant keepalive to Amazon is also not acceptable...
>

1) It's not just Amazon.
2) It's uninstallable
3) It's not a constant keepalive, only when you search in the home 
screen of the dash
4) It doesn't go directly to Amazon (or other stores) anyway. It's 
proxied via a Canonical server which anonymizes the requests.

Cheers,
-- 
Alan Pope
Engineering Manager

Canonical - Product Strategy
+44 (0) 7973 620 164
alan.pope at canonical.com
http://ubuntu.com/