advertisement in packaged software

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 10:52:27AM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> >Do the Fedora guidelines allow packaging of software that will show
> >advertisement to the user?
> I think it's difficult define what precisely is an advertisement,
> but I hope Fedora will be able to avoid this trap, particularly
> because advertising is so much about tracking users these days.

So, let's make this concrete. Mozilla has announced that Firefox will sell
default links on the "tiles" page. The exact mechanism for this is unclear
-- will it be more like a web browser with ads on its default start page, or
will it be more like adware? Will the trademark guidelines allow us to turn
this off (or, point to resources for Fedora users!) without renaming the
package?

We can currently ship our own bookmarks (I don't know the details, but I
believe that this is by permission -- a downstream distribution can't do so
without also asking for permission, and in fact may be in violation of they
ship _our_ bookmarks without asking separately, although I don't think that
has ever been made into an issue in practice), and this might just be
similar. But maybe not. We should get clarification.


> $ sandbox -t sandbox_web_t -X firefox
> You will see visually obnoxious nag screen.  The Mozilla tab might
> qualify as an ad as well.
> There is also the Emacs startup screen, but I find it less invasive.

These things are basically self-promotion for the thing itself. I think
that's a different category.

-- 
Matthew Miller    --   Fedora Project    --    <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>