Linux Mint Sells Out for Mozilla Money (betanews.com) 97
Brian Fagioli, reporting for BetaNews: The developers of the Ubuntu-based operating system have agreed to accept an undisclosed amount of money from Mozilla in exchange for making significant changes to Linux Mint. This includes removal of modifications to Firefox and a big change for search. The devs share the upcoming changes to Firefox in Linux Mint 19 and higher.
The default start page no longer points to https://www.linuxmint.com/start/
The default search engines no longer include Linux Mint search partners (Yahoo, DuckDuckGo...) but Mozilla search partners (Google, Amazon, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ebay...)
The default configuration switches from Mint defaults to Mozilla defaults.
Firefox no longer includes code changes or patches from Linux Mint, Debian or Ubuntu.
The default start page no longer points to https://www.linuxmint.com/start/
The default search engines no longer include Linux Mint search partners (Yahoo, DuckDuckGo...) but Mozilla search partners (Google, Amazon, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ebay...)
The default configuration switches from Mint defaults to Mozilla defaults.
Firefox no longer includes code changes or patches from Linux Mint, Debian or Ubuntu.
and...? (Score:3)
I mean, just make a package like "firefox-mint" (with "firefox-raw" dependency) so you install it and done.
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It would probably still be financially interesting for them, since many will not search for this package and simply use whatever be installed as default. — One cannot underestimate the commercial importance of defaults, even if the user be free to switch.
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No Surprise (Score:2)
I feel like the golden era of altruistic Linux Distributions has long died. It was great when it lasted, but it's a new generation at the reins and everyone's for hire now. The reward isn't always money, but it usually is.
Re:No Surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: No Surprise (Score:2)
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If you wanted to add Google to Firefox in Mint, you've always been able to. https://mycroftproject.com/ [mycroftproject.com]
Changing search providers is built into Firefox. That's unlikely to change.
Also, it's Linux. There's a fork for everything.
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--Of course, clickbait headline tries to make it seem like this is a Bad Thing somehow. I would say 98-99% of end-users DON'T CARE what the default search engine is or that the defaults have changed for one browser. The ones that DO care go in immediately and change the defaults anyway.
--Linux Mint (and Zorin OS) have been reviewed and seem to be the best-of-breed out there for Linux, if this change gives them a steady stream of income and maintains the project's quality, I have NO problems with it.
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In this case, the Mint devs are being paid to stop working and put things back the way they were before and promise not to work on it again. Nice gig if you can get it.
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I used to have a few colleagues who had much the same deal....
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Totally! There was a story about this just the other day where some package that is just a tiny part of larger applications was sabotaged by the developer, how much money do Linux users pay to all the individual contributors of all the packages that make up a distro? The makers of Mint are obviously getting a payday here but what of the developers of all the projects that go into Mint.
It’s just not sustainable.
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Re:No Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
They changed the default search engine and now use pure Firefox instead of the packages by Debian.
I fail to see how this is a sell out.
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I understand that but Mint doesn't pride itself on being fully gpl as Debian does. Last I checked, Mint had non-free repos enabled by default (for drivers, etc) versus Debian which does not.
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I understand that but Mint doesn't pride itself on being fully gpl as Debian does. Last I checked, Mint had non-free repos enabled by default (for drivers, etc) versus Debian which does not.
Yeah, if I recall correctly, that's the whole reason Mint became a distro and became popular. It was a Linux that easily worked on many machines and worked with all sorts of media because it would automatically install non-free drivers and codecs. I used it briefly and it did make the initial installation and setup easier than most distros at the time, but I didn't like their primary DEs so I didn't stick with it. It's a good one to suggest to Windows users who want an easy transition to Linux, though.
It lo
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Agreed.
When I started with desktop Linux (2004), I began with Suse. I bought it at barns and noble and never could get my nvidia drivers to work. I had an onboard card and a nvidia card and back then you had to edit the XFree86 config file and specify the bus along with installing the drivers. Trying to figure out directions between nividia and suse was a challenge since I had no idea what I was doing.
I switched to a now defunct distro called Mephis and everything worked. Now, I use Debian proper but I
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They also get a cut of the revenue from Google for doing this...
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Debian&co patch out telemetry and other spyware.
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Seriously?? More like Linux distributions that didn't like some quirk of an actual distribution (or to pay for it) and so copied 99% of it and rebranded it. Like CentOS, or Mint, or whatever. If it was an altruistic and independent Linux distribution, they would actually create it from the ground up, starting with the Linux kernel. That hasn't happened for a long time, and I'm not really worried about it. I just think you have an unrealistic view of things.
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Did you pay for Linux Mint? (Score:5, Insightful)
...then don't complain. They're under no obligation to you. This is just like the guy the other day who bugged his own libraries because he was tired of commercial users making use of them and not paying him one red cent and everyone freaked out about it. God forbid people should want to make money. Perish the thought.
If you really don't like this then perhaps consider that free as in freedom shouldn't mean free as in freeloader.
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My position is that if it isn't for sale, I can't buy it. Think about how bad Kickstarter is. Then remove every single obligation and protection. That's what my experiences have been like when donating lump sums to free software projects, and that is why I stopped doing so. I give a little to Joplin every month on Patreon since they met a huge need for me and have a clear vision, but that is it.
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I miss Seamonkey...
Why? It's still there [seamonkey-project.org]... And it's included with Slackware, makes me question why any other distro exists
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:-) Well, if you ever bother to check, you will find that they keep up quite nicely, and all without systemd...
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Lots of sites that SeaMonkey won't open now. Check out alt.comp.software.seamonky, it is largely complaints of sites stopping working. Some things are slowly being fixed or workarounds found but it is the usual story about lack of developers, Frank seems to be doing most of it now.
Posting from SeaMonkey.
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Lots of sites that SeaMonkey won't open now.
Yes, it's an excellent security feature
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Like he said, then don't give it away for free. What the fuck about this don't you understand. Ah, I think I see the problem. You don't want to understand.
Re: Did you pay for Linux Mint? (Score:4, Insightful)
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the site and especially the articles are still majorily user-sourced. It doesn't really matter that a news publication you're reading a fact in has ads.
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indeed; when the following clause or something like it appears in practically every open license that anyone uses, one would need to be a complete imbecile to expect anything else (in fact, it's usually even in all-caps which i had to change for slashdot):
"... Any express or implied warranties, including... the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness... are disclaimed. In no event shall the copyright holder... be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential dam
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that's kind of a double standard:
- did you pay for Linux Mint? No? Then don't complain they now act in their self-interest.
- did you pay for the libraries? No? Then complain the author now acts in their self-interested ???
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I donated to Mint a few times. I might pay more if they show a financial statement about what the money is used for. It isn't clear whether the money goes to one person (Clement), a company with multiple employees, or a nonprofit organization; whether it funds Cinnamon, and so on.
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This is just like the guy the other day who bugged his own libraries because he was tired of commercial users making use of them and not paying him one red cent and everyone freaked out about it.
No. This is nothing like that.
This is a project making a project related decision just like every other fork that is in some way different from their upstream counterparts. This is not breaking a feature. This isn't removing functionality. This isn't in any way a negative to the end user, who can at any point change their defaults after first install.
That the other day was a moron who didn't understand the license he was using, fucking up projects the world over because his knickers were in a twist and comm
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...then don't complain. They're under no obligation to you. This is just like the guy the other day who bugged his own libraries because he was tired of commercial users making use of them and not paying him one red cent and everyone freaked out about it. God forbid people should want to make money. Perish the thought.
If you really don't like this then perhaps consider that free as in freedom shouldn't mean free as in freeloader.
There is no "money" in free software. As a retired old fart, I can't part with my pension pennies. I did produce freeware, but noone who stopped to post a "thank you, it is in my library as useful". But aside from retirees, corps who take the software, repackage it and make a buck from it, should share in the benefits. If they do not, free software will cease to exist.
And the big deal is? (Score:2)
Honestly, it does not sound like a list of big deal items aside from code patches - but, are there any? Are they significant? The article does not say.
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That is my take, what is the big deal ? AFAIK Slackware does this for free. Slackware recompiles vanilla Firefox into its own package, with permission from Firefox. Maybe Slackware can score some funds too.
First things I do on any firefox (Score:2)
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Re: First things I do on any firefox (Score:2)
Mozilla has sold out hard core.
They have also made changes which have no reasonable explanation except spying on users.
Anyone who gives them money is paying them to fuck up Firefox at this point.
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After all, The Internet without NoScript is something I don't care to use.
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> There are only two browsers out there
Opera
Palemoon
Chromium
Brave
--Those are just the ones I have installed on my Mac. Also available for Linux.
/ Don'care about Windoze
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Opera and Brave are based on Chromium now. Yes, even Opera. Palemoon is based on FF. So two browsers.
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But that's a big enough deal that at least one of the forks of firefox will remove it. And you can bet the chromium forks will cancel it as well. Vivaldi, for example. Except of course Google will pay them all off quietly.
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I hated the Mint changes anyway (Score:2)
This is nothing to get mad at Mint over, if you weren't already mad about the stuff they were doing for money.
Mint's version hasn't been any less user-hostile than the Firefox default. Guys, I don't want advertising and tracking on my home page.
Sensationalist- click-bait article (Score:5, Interesting)
An open source project sold out to... another open source project? Come on, betanews. What a sensationalist piece of drivel.
While i confess Mozilla as an organization drives me crazy and this whole idea of forcing some devs' notion of some kind of bizarre, branded, uniformity on everyone is tiresome (firefox, gnome 3, etc), firefox could be forked if you don't like it. In fact I use icecat as my daily driver. Doesn't fix the UI stupidness, but it is free from any trademarks issues and the maintainers can modify it however they want.
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If they agreed to do it for free or have a best of three street fighter alpha 2 contest, I think the spirit of open source would be appeased....
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No idea. I assume it works with whatever Firefox works with.
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I don't have any problem with someone trying to convince people to feel a certain way; but using manipulative techniques like emotionally loaded language bugs me. Stand up and say what happened, how you feel about it, and why you think I should feel the same way. I might not agree with you, but because you respected me I'd be inclined to return the favor.
It goes the other way too; I detest people I agree with using propaganda on me. I'm a critic of the Chinese regime; the Internet has noticed and deluges
Baker (Score:1)
Quote from orig. article... (Score:2)
Original article contains the marvelous phrasing "You could have went with a Chromebook but you didn't [...]"
Just putting this here.
Change the search engines to our defaults... (Score:1)
Look at it like this, Mozilla gets a small cut of the money from Google etc on the search referrals. This deal with Linux Mint pretty much is Mozilla saying, "we'll give you a cut of the money if you set the search preferences back to something that makes us money too". I like money too.
If Mozilla offered me millions (Score:2)
I'd bend over and sell my ass too. You only have to take it once, after that just imagine all the hooker and blow parties you can have.
Linux Mint can do what they want to do... (Score:2)
head in the sand (Score:2)
Sticking the head in the sans does not work because it's contagious, and other distris will follow soon.
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I suspect Mint is not the first. In fact Ubuntu itself seemed to have changed a year or so back. Firefox now updates itself directly from Mozilla servers. Canonical's repo isn't used any longer.
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Is it really Mozilla money though? (Score:2)
If the goal is to get Google as the default search then can we really assume this is Mozilla money and not a back door buy off by Google? Last stat I saw was that 88% of Mozilla's funding still comes from Google in exchange for a number of concessions.
It stands to reason that Linux Mint would have egg on their face if it sold out directly to Alphabet so the plausible workaround is do run the money through Mozilla instead.
Considering I use... (Score:1)
Mad at Mozilla (Score:1)
no big deal (Score:2)
I don't think the changes is a big deal. So what if the defaults are changing. I will be changing everything to what I use anyway.
Sounds good! (Score:3)
Why? It's more evidence that Linux Mint is getting even more traction, otherwise Mozilla wouldn't care. The recent point release (20.3 "Una") upgrade having been followed by their servers being more overwhelmed with download requests than ever was another piece of evidence. This probably will be the last upgrade that forced the main package source to back to Mint's own servers from whatever mirror server had been selected.
And why should someone not want to accept money for not doing some work they used to be doing?! Just for getting bloody Firefox like everyone else gets it per default, too?
It's still one of the major browsers, as much as the Mozilla Foundation is trying to make it unusable for people conscious about how much they control their computers.
Great, Awesome! (Score:1)
I used to love Firefox. Now it is a crap show. This is just another step towards perdition.
"Significant changes to Linux Mint"? (Score:2)
It sounds like all they're changing is the default Firefox configuration.
Who complained about it - Yahoo?
Edge with DuckDuckGo Extension is A-OKAY (Score:2)
I'm not settled on Edge versus Firefox as my default daily driver on Mint, but it's definitely not Chrome or other third-party browsers.
Who benefits? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, Mint goes for the money, ok, good for them.
But why does Mozilla has to pay Mint? Mint already had Firefox, maybe not the exact same version, but it is not like Firefox is trying to increase its market share. So what is so special in the "official" version of Firefox? Tracking? Ads? Is Mozilla the new Google? I hope not, but who knows, Mozilla has been known for its terrible decisions in the last years.
Most likely, the answer is Google. Google pays Mozilla, which pays Mint. Why doesn't Mint partners with Google directly, again, I don't know.
But if we treat it as an indirect Google-Mint deal, do Google has a lot to earn? I don't know the official search engine for Mint. Yahoo? Do people keep using Yahoo? I guess most have already switched to Google without Google making any effort. And the "privacy" crowd probably have set it to DuckDuckGo or similar, and will not let it go to Google.
My guess is the following: our partnership with Yahoo is worthless, we don't want to maintain a fork of Firefox, most people are already using Google, so let's make a deal with Mozilla, which can bring us both the browser and their own partner (i.e. Google) money. Really, it is a win for everyone, Less work and more money for Mint, probably also for Mozilla, Google foots the bill. In fact you should be happy *especially* if you hate Google, because Google is now paying for users they had for free before (those who switched from Yahoo to Google), and you can still use your favorite non-Google engine.
Hilarious (Score:4, Interesting)
Changing a browser's defaults is a significant change in a bloody operating system? What drugs does someone have to take?
I suggest reading Levebvre's blog post [linuxmint.com] and his answers to all the questions in the comments. It isn't even clear yet whether Linux Mint will lose or gain money with this, because they lose revenue from Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. I think this comment sums everything up nicely:
By the way, Linux Mint would have had to move to building their own Firefox packages from scratch instead of just modifying the Ubuntu packages because Ubuntu is in the process of changing Firefox packaging to snap. Now getting the .deb packages from Mozilla would have been a godsend even if they wouldn't get some revenue from that decision.
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Linux Mint would have had to move to building their own Firefox packages from scratch instead of just modifying the Ubuntu packages because Ubuntu is in the process of changing Firefox packaging to snap. Now getting the .deb packages from Mozilla would have been a godsend even if they wouldn't get some revenue from that decision.
Thanks for that tidbit. I would much prefer to tweak my search settings than to have Snap on my computer. I am very glad that the developers of Mint share my distaste for snap and don't sully their distro with it :-)
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Changing a browser's defaults is a significant change in a bloody operating system? What drugs does someone have to take?
In the eyes of many, the browser has the same significance as the operating system.
While I personally do not see it this way, most people can nowadays only work with browser-based tooling. It is the only thing they want and get pretty vocal if you do not provide a (crippled) web-interface to software tools that worked for them previously. Pretty sure I'm not the only one noticing this trend.
So yeah, I can imagine someone afflicted with that blurred vision on computing to get up in arms after a browser chang
Fork it or fork off (Score:2)
That's the beauty of FOSS and since few users donate those who don't should be grateful for free stuff.
It's only browser settings and any user offended but not sufficient to use another distro (as if mere downloading meant anything beyond using bandwidth) can change those as desired.
Betanews wanted clickbait and got it. Not an impressive performance.
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I would agree that FF isn't the best browser if it wasn't also the only browser that isn't based on Chrome, and is still vaguely free of Google control.
Wait, what? (Score:2)
If I were only to focus on one of those companies affected... Mint is selling out Duckduckgo and switching to... Duckduckgo? Does Slashdot think Duckduckgo is good or evil these days? I'm not asking for a friend, I'm asking for myself... I'm old, have a beard, wear sandals and sweat pants, my significant others are my computer and my cat, I have excessive body hair and body fat, and I haven't bathed in four weeks. Also I remember a time when Slashdot thought Google was a wholesome company that could n
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>> I'm old, have a beard, wear sandals and sweat pants, my significant others are my computer and my cat, I have excessive body hair and body fat, and I haven't bathed in four weeks.
Stallman is that you?