If Ubuntu continues to make choices which do end up annoying users to get a few extra bucks, that could end up being a problem for them and could drive Linux users to other distros, even the simple “take Ubuntu and make a few little changes” distros, just to give users a better out-of-the-box experience.

Not a big deal, no, but still.

yahoo suck so bad! i don’t wanna have that set as default! Thats called downgrading, which i’m totally against!

I think you may be blowing this up a little. This is a tiny change to a default policy that was originally discussed at an Ubuntu Developer Summit over a year ago. It is a change that can be disabled with two clicks for those who don’t want to use Yahoo! and the general community reaction has been largely “meh”. It is a decision made in conjunction with our friends at Mozilla, we have announced the decision early in the cycle on our public mailing list, we ran our design team past it to ensure there were no regressions in interaction experience and we gave the Community Council and Technical Board a heads up. I have also spent as much time as I can responding to concerns.

Yes, the change is there to generate revenue, but revenue to continue the success of Ubuntu and invest in further resources. This tiny change does not change the community infrastructure, extensive open governance and infrastructure across bugs, blueprints, burndown tracking, public meetings and all the other ways in which we develop Ubuntu. It is merely a planned feature that will help support the project.

Jono

Of course this deal is just a first step in a takeover bid, by the end of this deal, Yahoo won’t exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo#Criticism_and_controversy

Many people want that. The problem is that copyrights and patents are very complicated things and even vaguely defined.
Some countries don’t recognize Public-Domain, some countries (India) don’t have software patents. Licensing and copyrights and patents law differ all over the globe. Distribution of software marred with patents are inherently difficult.

note: I make a delineation between “user” and “community” the “community” is an elitist clique and the users are the masses of people running ubuntu in all of it’s flavours. The users if asked would choose Google, we were not asked. If we were asked we would not choose Yahoo!