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“I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

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Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a random sales person can easily go ahead and access PII on their own initiative, that's 1000x worse.

$10 says there's an Excel sheet that's passed around with all of your info in it.

Of course there is, but there shouldn't be. _Especially_ in a bigger company like Canonical.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#112

I'm super confused as to why anybody thinks this is a problem. Generally, when one "buys" something from a "marketplace" the vendor gets to know who the buyer is. That the vendor asks the buyer if there's anything else they'd want to buy is par for the course.

What? When I buy something at a brick and mortar store, I don't expect the product's manufacturer to get my personal information. I don't even expect the store to get my personal information if I pay in cash. I don't want some "relationship" with a company just because I buy their product.

Well... they do get your personal information along with tens of other companies involved in any transaction. Crm, payment processors, anti-fraud, manufacturers, etc.

When you buy a product you agree to whatever terms there are, you only get to write terms if you’re writing up a contract.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#113

I'm super confused as to why anybody thinks this is a problem. Generally, when one "buys" something from a "marketplace" the vendor gets to know who the buyer is. That the vendor asks the buyer if there's anything else they'd want to buy is par for the course.

What? When I buy something at a brick and mortar store, I don't expect the product's manufacturer to get my personal information. I don't even expect the store to get my personal information if I pay in cash. I don't want some "relationship" with a company just because I buy their product.

Sure, but you did notice that they had a mailing list and gave them your name and email address and a bit more information so they could get back to you.

This thread explains it in more detail: https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168

Seems pretty simple. No real story, other than the OP not paying attention.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#114
post #43

This is incredibly common. I installed an analytics package on my personal heroku account for a side project and received an email on my enterprise email account from their sales department. My personal heroku account uses my personal email address, eg. jbob@gmail.com, but my enterprise account uses my full name, eg. jonathan.bob@bigco.com. There's a sneaky CRM tool floating around that is connecting the dots on peop…

I think it is apollo, they had linked my job email and personal email already.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#115

I'm super confused as to why anybody thinks this is a problem. Generally, when one "buys" something from a "marketplace" the vendor gets to know who the buyer is. That the vendor asks the buyer if there's anything else they'd want to buy is par for the course.

If the email came over an Azure customer support system, or even to the corporate email used to sign up for the Azure account, then sure - I would personally find this very obnoxious and it being buried in the license agreement is suspicious, but not really that unethical. Crucially, this arrangement means Canonical could engage in marketing without MSFT sharing much personal data about Azure users. What's extremely…

LinkedIn? The also-Microsoft-owned service where you can pay to send DMs to users?

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding "huge violation of boundaries", because there are none on LinkedIn. I get multiple DMs a week from folks I don't know selling something.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ubuntu is a free product. Canonical should not be able to find out if I (specifically me or my organization) allocates or runs 1 or 10000 instances of Ubuntu I agree with the message behind this and obviously Canonical and Microsoft are both being extremely gross. But Ubuntu as a binary image (or source code) is a very different product than a VM with Ubuntu pre-installed and pre-configured, which is what you paid…

> But Ubuntu as a binary image (or source code) is a very different product than a VM with Ubuntu pre-installed. How? Why? If it's different in any meaningful way from just clicking "next" on the installer then it's no longer Ubuntu, and certainly not Canonical Ubuntu, that's pre-installed. It's become, at best, Microsoft-Ubuntu-Because-Microsoft-Added-Telemetry-For-Azure. Or it's Canoncical-Ubuntu-Configured-By-Micr…

You don't get to decide what is and isn't "Ubuntu", Canonical does. Did you likewise declare that Ubuntu isn't Ubuntu anymore when Canonical dropped Unity? or when they added snap? Or when they added or later removed the Amazon search plugin?

When I'm paying for an official Azure version of Ubuntu on Azure, I darn well expect there will be a closer support relationship than the free desktop version.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ubuntu is a free product. Canonical should not be able to find out if I (specifically me or my organization) allocates or runs 1 or 10000 instances of Ubuntu I agree with the message behind this and obviously Canonical and Microsoft are both being extremely gross. But Ubuntu as a binary image (or source code) is a very different product than a VM with Ubuntu pre-installed and pre-configured, which is what you paid…

> But Ubuntu as a binary image (or source code) is a very different product than a VM with Ubuntu pre-installed. How? Why? If it's different in any meaningful way from just clicking "next" on the installer then it's no longer Ubuntu, and certainly not Canonical Ubuntu, that's pre-installed. It's become, at best, Microsoft-Ubuntu-Because-Microsoft-Added-Telemetry-For-Azure. Or it's Canoncical-Ubuntu-Configured-By-Micr…

[deleted]

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#118

Wow- and I thought it was weird and inappropriate when I got a linkedin message from a MongoDB rep basically saying "Hey! I'm the account manager for your company so let me know if you need help with anything Mongo related!" (subtext being, how can I convince you to use (more) mongo services on your project)

I mean the job of an account manager is supporting the client. I don’t know how you can contort that into something to be mad about.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#119
post #8

The register article on this https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubunt... has responses from Canonical and MS, which shed a bit more light on the situation. The Canonical quote is the most illuminating :- "As per the Azure T&Cs, Microsoft shares with Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, the contact details of developers launching Ubuntu instances on Azure. These contact details are held in Canonical…

Wow. I just lost a whole lot of respect for Canonical. “If you read the document we expect nobody to read, you’d know that you sold your soul to us. We didn’t mean for you to find that out but one of our salespeople got overeager and tried to sell you your soul back. He will be reprimanded. Can we all forget about this real quick?”

> one of our salespeople got overeager and tried to sell you your soul back. He will be reprimanded.

I wonder what have the consequences been for that guy.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is more so *why* Microsoft is sharing this information with Canonical. — what does it obtain from it? Ubuntu is gratis, so Canonical can't have coerced Microsoft into doing so; it is quite probable that one approached the other to make a deal, and that Canonical is paying a certain fee for this information.

The code is gratis. Although, partnership deals tend to go beyond simply sharing code, and into the realm of dedicating time and resources to working with each other.

The code is more than just gratis; it's libre. This is Ubuntu, based on Debian GNU/Linux. (Yeah, okay, some of the code is merely gratis, but most of it is libre.)

I don't expect an OS based on an OS based on an OS based on a half-finished OS based on free software principles to have shady data-dealing attached, yet hidden from the people whose data is being dealt.

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