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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”

#171

Post by ec109685 »

raesene9 wrote: 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…

A T&C is a terrible place to put this in. This should work like an account linking flow (e.g. sign on with Apple to a site), where Apple lists everything they share explicitly when you click login.

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

#172

Post by fireball_blaze »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #144
fireball_blaze wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no one is calling this guy a villain. For example, his name is not mentioned once in all these HN comments. It's not his fault. And indeed the Azure T&C's are definitely referenced a in the Twitter discussion with the OP. Such as: https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168

It really depends on company culture. But there's probably a good chance this affects him at the company internally.

Perhaps. At the very least, it's gotta be uncomfortable for him.

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

#173

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

duxup wrote: post #17
raesene9 wrote: 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…

I think the Marketplace quote is worth noting too: >A look at the terms for the Azure Marketplace throws up this sentence: "If you purchase or use a Marketplace Offering, we may share with the Publisher of such Offering your contact information and details about the transaction and your usage." So the publisher of something on their Marketplace gets some information. This doesn't seem 'that' weird (well the linked in…

But I think that these comments from the Twitter thread are very valid:

> I belive you spun up the VM based on an image from the Azure Marketplace, specifically one from Ubuntu. That is not a microsoft image, you accepted an offer from Ubuntu and now they contact you to follow up. That's my understanding of the situation. Hopefully someone can clarify

> Where exactly it is visible any ToS?! As soon as I clicked on "add new VM", the first option suggested was Ubuntu 18.04. I didn't dig into the Azure Marketplace. I just picked the first option available since I quickly need a linux-based test VM.

I mean, I'm not as familiar with the AWS marketplace, but I use the GCP marketplace, and when I choose an offering from that marketplace it's very clear I'm just buying a prepackaged solution from another vendor, and I'd expect that other vendor gets my info. IMO this is very different from choosing the OS for your VM from a dropdown.

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

#174

Post by throwawayboise »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #79
inetknght wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * I would find this message to be a lot better - "We see that you've taken advantage of the Ubuntu image* No. That's not better at all. The mere fact that Canonical has specific information to reach me when I am not a direct customer of Canonical is a complete violation of my privacy. 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…

> 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…

Both Microsoft and Canonical are for-profit enterprises.

To quote the old native american (?) fable: You knew what I was when you picked me up.

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

#175

Post by dron57 »

Hizonner wrote: post #156
ProAm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the 'not on prem' tax that will be the norm going forward.

I'm under the impression that on-prem Ubuntu phones home. I guess maybe it can't guess your LinkedIn name, though.

It's trivial to disable any telemetry considering it's open source:

https://github.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-report

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

#176

Post by BelenusMordred »

95e702cdcbd7d09 wrote: post #137
IgorPartola wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then time to move off Ubuntu? I’ve been a big fan of it for a long time but it seems my servers will be moving to a BSD sooner rather than later.

Other good reasons to move away from Ubuntu: * They show you ads on login * They periodically phone home with: Ubuntu version, kernel version, architecture, CPU model, curl/wget version, cloud (if applicable; aws/openstack/...). This is part of the delivery system of the ads mentioned above. See /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news for the actual script.

* Snap breaking all the things

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

#177

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

autoditype wrote: post #2

I thought this was going to be a Clippy joke, but the truth was much more disturbing. Why is Microsoft sharing this level of information (from a corporate account) with third parties?

It’s not a „third party“. The image spun up by the user is published to the Azure marketplace by Canonical.

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

#178

Post by jacurtis »

markild wrote: post #15
raesene9 wrote: 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…

Great, so their conclusion is "we should make this less obvious and creepy", not "we should probably stop doing this".

Yes, that is the big takeaway here and why I just lost a ton of respect for Canonical.

In Canonical's statement they never regretted using the information to contact the user. The part they regretted was TELLING the user that they are monitoring the installs and linking those installs to personal contact details.

Canonical promised to improve training to avoid those "poor choice of words", NOT to stop the practice. Basically they will train their staff to make it feel more serendipitous when they just so happen to reach out about selling an enterprise license moments after you install the VM on Azure. Canonical doesn't regret this sales practice and plans to keep using it. That's the scary part in this story.

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

#179

Post by tailspin2019 »

somehnguy wrote: post #129

I installed Ubuntu onto a physical machine recently because I needed to use a Linux package for something real quick. Upon trying to install the incredibly common package I was given some error about it not existing and some nonsense about using snaps. I don't care about learning how to use snaps, I just want to get something done. I quickly installed Debian instead and got back to doing the work I needed to do. It r…

I too have started to notice some increased “friction” when trying to setup Ubuntu these days.

Like you, I don’t care about “snaps” (though in my ignorance I’m willing to accept I may be missing out on something useful...)

Even when you go to their Download page for Server, the first option is not a download link but some blurb about “Multipass” which I’m pretty sure is not what the majority of people are looking for when they click a menu option called “Download” for a server OS.

But this LinkedIn crap is just awful and surprises me coming from Canonical.

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

#180

Post by briman314 »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #103

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)

No doubt that's the subtext but this happens EVERYWHERE. Have you ever downloaded a whitepaper for any vendor and then get harrassed with 4-5 times about talking about it?

That sounds gentle in comparison. I would use the opportunity to ask for free swag or training if it was possible. :)

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