Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo
Le Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 07:50:06PM -0500, Kumar Appaiah a écrit :
>
> Frankly, I don't see why both cannot agree. By coming up with an
> arrangement for sharing Debian searches and NOT changing $BROWSER
> defaults, you are just allowing those hits to be recorder as $BROWSER
> (upstream) hits as opposed to Debian hits, and Debian is not
> compensated. This doesn't adversely affect upstream unless the
> maintainers aggressively alter the default User-Agent or some other
> indicator which would deny upstream their rightful due. Would you agree?
Hi Kumar
If that due were rightful, we would accept in Debian some works where the
license requires the user to share with the upstream developers the profits he
makes with their software. But this is clearly non-free. So the problem
is not about who has the right to get the money.
I think that there are two problems.
a) Deviations from upstream defaults for no technical reason.
b) Ad-hoc short terms solutions to a more general problem, motivated by the fear
of losing the opportunity of reveiving money.
Service providers need feedback to better operate. This is observed in many
human-designed and nature-evolved complex systems. Ourselves, we have Popocon
for that purpose. But in the case of web services or web browsers, this whole
uncoordinated competition at each level of the food chain for inserting a name
or changing the defaults is not going to be practical.
DDG's time and money, together with the other players in the browser/searcher
field, will be better spent in working and agreeing on a standard, with clear
description on the purposes, mechanisms and functions, and how it serves the
protection of privacy and the reduction of monopolies, which can be integrated
in the Linux distributions and configured by the users.
That makes less money for Debian, but a better-working ecosystem, of which we
will also benefit.
Cheers,
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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