Exactly. The old "I'm sorry I got caught" and not "I'm sorry I did it."
The word "better" does not imply a commitment towards customers and/or investors. *The word "do" should not be seen as referring to the taking of any specific course of action which may or may not yield tangible change. *The word "can" does not signify a concrete ability and is not forward-looking. *The word "We" should not be interpreted as Canonical Ltd. nor any of its subsidiaries or affiliated entities.
>It Depends on what the meaning of the word is is
There's a big difference between "is" and "was". Which is what he should have said. There were no semantic games in that particular statement, in stark contrast to some of the other things he said.
I don't really understand why everyone is up in arms here. In this case, Microsoft is basically a reseller. They told Canonical that they sold one of their product to a customer and Canonical reached out on LinkedIn, a professional social network. It all seems fair game to me. This is not some creepy internet tracking using dubious way to segment people. This is basic direct marketing in a B2B context.
It's all pretty tame.
It is actually completely unacceptable on what is advertised as a secure platform to engage in targeted marketing AT ALL. If any information about what my company is doing on your platform is shared to other companies, then you are not secure by any definition of the word that I'm aware of. It is not for you to judge what information is valuable or damaging for us.
Security and data sharing have nothing in common. It is perfectly acceptable to share customers list when you are resellers if you clearly state you will do so in the contract. It doesn't become true because you write it in all cap and say it is not for me to judge. If you so value your company information, maybe you should start reading what you sign.
Once again, we are not talking about an unreadable EULA for personal software. Azure is a platform geared towards professional. Nothing creepy is happening here. That's Canonical reaching out and giving a potential customer a point of contact if they ever need support. This has nothing to do with broad data collection and spying and is perfectly reasonable. I don't understand why some commenters here find the idea of talking with an actual human being so traumatic.
> If you so value your company information, maybe you should start reading what you sign.
Is exactly what people are up in arms about. Even reading the EULA, you may not expect Microsoft to permit data sharing in this way. And if this is entirely unacceptable for you, then it's time to leave Microsoft.
Or you can make noise about it online like this, and cause Microsoft to realise this sharing will lose them customers. I doubt the data is worth the churn, and Microsoft will likely change the policy rather than lose the customers.
Well maybe it is ok from that perspective. However my personal reaction as a customer to such sales approach would simple be something in line of GFY to that salesperson.
Canonical never said "oh the salesperson shouldn't have had this information".
There's only one way they could have used it.
The sales rep was probably expected to reach out claiming some other reason, making it look like the standard LinkedIn spam, but in reality much more targeted.
The part I find the most enlightening (ie: disturbing) is that Canonical's only regret is that the sales rep used "a poor choice of word" and they will train their salespeople better.
I assume the "poor choice of word" was when the salesman said, "I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu instance". Was Canonical's biggest regret that the salesmen INFORMED the user that they are monitoring installs and linking them to contact information?
Canonical never said "oh the salesperson wasn't supposed to market to you with this information", instead they basically said, the salesman wasn't supposed to TELL YOU that we are monitoring what you install and linking it to personal contact details.