Richard Stallman calls Ubuntu spyware

Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, denounces the fact that Ubuntu shares local searches with parent company Canonical. That makes the Linux distribution spyware, according to Stallman. The functionality is used to show search results on Amazon.com.

Stallman – already not a fan of Ubuntu, because of the presence of software that is not open source – calls Ubuntu “spyware” on the Free Software Foundation website. “One of the greatest benefits of free software is that it protects you from malware,” writes Stallman. “Ubuntu has now become a counterexample.”

The open source legend thus refers to functionality that is built into Ubuntu 12.10 and about which the Electronic Frontier Foundation has already expressed its concerns. In Ubuntu 12.10, when a user performs a query in the default Unity interface, the query is sent unsolicited to servers of Ubuntu’s parent company Canonical. This is done in order to display search results from Amazon.com, a Canonical sponsor.

Stallman is annoyed that Ubuntu is involved with Amazon, a company that according to has many wrongs on his record, but his main objection is that Ubuntu sends queries. According to him, Ubuntu violates the privacy of its users. According to him, it doesn’t matter that search queries are not sent directly to Amazon. “It’s just as bad when Canonical collects your personal data,” he says. The fact that the functionality can be switched off if desired also plays no role, according to Stallman, who also expressed his aversion to Apple hardware, Windows and the PlayStation 3 in his speech.

Meanwhile, Canonical got it right announced that the Amazon integration will be expanded even further in the next Ubuntu release, version 13.04. From that version onwards, purchases from Amazon can be made directly from the search bar, without users having to open a browser window. It is unknown how much Amazon Canonical pays for this.