It's likely in response to Ubuntu's controversial new "feature" of including Amazon search results in unity search (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/24/ubuntu_amazon_sugges...)

I'm guessing it may have had more to do with Ubuntu's decision to "develop out of the public eye": http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/18/canonical-ceo-mark-shuttlew...

dead response from rlpb:

In a subsequent blog post, Mark Shuttleworth says: """ What I offered to do, yesterday, spontaneously, is to invite members of the community in to the things we are working on as personal projects, before we are ready to share them. This would mean that there was even less of Ubuntu that was NOT shaped and polished by folk other than Canonical – a move that one would think would be well received. This would make Canonical even more transparent. So please disregard the commentary by folk who assumed that the public discussion of Ubuntu development would somehow change. """ http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1207

I love this (from the article):

"You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update." -- Mark Shuttleworth

That's not the same as "I trust you with my personal information." No matter how trivial, it's still personal information.

Seems like this could be a potential security risk, as well, although I'm having trouble articulating it.

The simple truth is that you cannot use an OS without trusting its developers. To a lesser degree, the same is true for any software. I do not like this dependence either but it seems to be a reality we (at least I) have to accept.

I don't think that is true of software at all. I wouldn't trust Fyodor (well, I suppose these days I would. Not in the past though), but I do and always have trusted Nmap.

The fact that we're okay with running their code need not necessarily mean that we should be okay with sending them personal information. The two are mutually exclusive.

The word you're looking for is "orthogonal".

Mutually exclusive means that either one, xor the other can be true, but not both. That is not the case here. You can be OK with running someone's code and with sending them your personal information.

It's strange because he wrote "making free software is not free" not "using free software is not free". This gives the impression that somehow working on ubuntu tweak is costing him too much money.

From his tweets, the latest version of ubuntu tweak is built on a web view, which means some parts of the soft is running on the server, and so far this server nearly runs out of the bandwidth.

Maybe he should have approached Ubuntu then? I bet it wouldn't be a significant expense for them to host such a useful utility.

I am curious why it would need to be a web view that he hosts, rather than something running locally on the user's machine.

If so, a nice feature would have been to add the removal of this to Ubuntu Tweak

He explained this in a later article: http://blog.ubuntu-tweak.com/2012/10/22/thank-you-ubuntu-twe... He feels like Ubuntu tweak is getting too high maintenance and that he just needs to step away from it for a little while, to work out a balance with his job and life and such.

xxaio, I tried to respond directly to you but you are hellbanned.

My guess is that this app might take a lot of time, and unless the developer is paid well elsewhere then a realization may be had--time costs money :/.

That's my only complaint about free software--UX can be rough at times for the uninitiated.

I wonder the same thing.