I wanted to reply to the various comments that have been raised regarding a post I made following episode 111. The post was regarding the change of default search provider in Mint 13. I saw James’ comment that the Mint team are trying to make money from the search queries, and I think this is a sensible revenue stream for the team to aim for. However subsequent discussions on the difficulties of changing search provider sort of strayed off the point – I have, and will continue to, change my provider to Google without much trouble. The point I was trying to make is that I seem to remember great fanfare when the default provider was to be changed to Duck Duck Go partly because of the new business model, but mainly because it contributes to open source and doesn’t track you. The point I was trying to make is whether the same can be said for Yahoo? And if not doesn’t this seem like they’ve changed solely for the money? I understand that a distro with the quality of Mint requires money to make so I see the need for this revenue stream, but if they sold Duck Duck Go on its ethical credentials I don’t see how Yahoo can be an acceptable substitute.

The below text is lifted from the Mint 12 release blurb – http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_lisa_whatsnew.php

“The new default search engine is Duck Duck Go. It doesn’t show different results depending on who’s making the search, it doesn’t track or record user information, it provides you with optmized results and it’s built on and contributes to Open Source.”

It will be interesting on how all the patents law suits finally play out. In the end it will be the consumer paying.

Richard

BN’s deal with the devil in Redmond just makes me want to not give them any business anymore. It’s going to be hard enough finding a ‘Droid phone that doesn’t give licensing to MS, the mere fact that one of the best defenders of open source software dives in bed with them makes me wonder if before long we’ll end up with no options left to get appliances from companies that support and stand up for the rights of open source users.

For Firefox extensions I also Siphon (http://siphon-fx.com/) to reinstall my addons on a fresh browser. I have to remember to install Siphon but once I do it offers to reinstall my addons and removeons for me. It’s a one-two punch that Chromium doesn’t need to remember your extensions but I’m glad I have it for the fox.

Well, done, Sir! Doing a podcast on your lonesome is hard… but lots of good information. Thanks for putting it out there.

The thing that struck me hardest as I was listening to you talk about the on-going conflicts between Google and Oracle, or Microsoft and Barnes & Noble, was that if you care about a quality product, you can’t give the vendor complete control over that product. I’m talking DRM. First in music, then in movies, now in books.

I usually go through O’Reilly, Baen Books, and the Google book-store before turning to Barnes & Noble for an e-book. Sometimes it works out very well (O’Reilly offers discounts if you’ve already bought the printed book, and updates to the new editions are free) but sometimes there’s a hold-out for the old model (the first four books of Game of Thrones was $19.99 a few months back on bn.com- had to snag it).

Hopefully, it won’t take too long for the book-people to learn the lessons of the music industry; offer a good product at a reasonable price and consumers will buy it. Lock a product down or tie it to a specific device, and Napster-clones pop-up like weeds in the lawn…

http://oreilly.com/
http://www.baen.com/library/