Unity Legal notice

[Nicolò Zilio]

Unity "Legal Notice" function should be shown in the dash as the user click on the link.
Now the link open a local HTML web page with the default system internet browser.

[Adam Semenov (visualblocks)]

Does this mean you want the legal notice to appear in the dash and not in firefox?

[Nicolò Zilio (nicolozilio)]

Hi,
Yes I think that would be better to show the legal notice in the dash and not in firefox/chome.

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

But why? Reading over a transparent overlay would not be nice, at all. Why is wrong to have a browser opening? MS do that as well.

[Nicolò Zilio (nicolozilio)]

IMHO it should appear on it to make unity more complete....

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Nicolò: OTOH, it would increase code in Unity Dash for very little gain, and probably negative gain. Firstly it's a 90%/10% thing; the legal notice is not frequently used, but still needs to be reliable and easy to interact with when required. The current situation of using a Web browser would seem to meet that require elegantly.

Second, the concept of the Dash is a search enabler, rather than a content interface; so you pop the Dash overlay, /find/ what you want, and launch to that task or content. /Doing work/ inside Unity Dash would defeat that premise, because you may not recursively pop up the Unity Dash over itself.

The current setup is, I believe, more functional and consistent. For example, by opening the legal task in a web browser, the user can then be reading that legal text, discover a term they are not sure about, and then bring up the Unity Dash to locate the legal phase via the Legal Eagle(tm) Dictionary Lens from Legal&Legal&Sons(tm).

If you were performing the task within Unity Dash itself, recursion would not be possible, and the user would be at a disadvantage.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Here's how we are going to handle this:

 * We will make a very bold, clear way for you to turn on and off
network queries across ALL scopes for any given session in the dash.
Think about this like the 'anonymous' mode in your browser. Toggle it,
right there in the Dash, and you are totally certain you are not sending
network traffic. We will aim to enforce this at the kernel level, hence
the CC to Jamie S who leads our security team.

 * We will have the ability to configure the Home screen, including
choice of scopes, and the behaviour of individual scopes.

 * Legal notices will all be in one place, in the 'About Ubuntu' part of
the UX, and visible in the install experience too.

Mark

[Ryan Prior (ryanprior)]

That seems very sensible, Mark. I hardly think we could have a more
consumer-friendly solution without fundamentally sacrificing the utility we
hope to provide with Unity's scopes. Thank you for making a firm decision,
and doubly for being on our side.

Ryan

P.S. big ups to Jono as well, for your invaluable work in keeping Canonical
in touch with community viewpoints on this issue.

[Vibhav Pant (vibhavp)]

I couldnt have thought of a better solution. +1!
On Feb 17, 2013 9:53 PM, "Mark Shuttleworth" <email address hidden> wrote:

>
> Here's how we are going to handle this:
>
> * We will make a very bold, clear way for you to turn on and off
> network queries across ALL scopes for any given session in the dash.
> Think about this like the 'anonymous' mode in your browser. Toggle it,
> right there in the Dash, and you are totally certain you are not sending
> network traffic. We will aim to enforce this at the kernel level, hence
> the CC to Jamie S who leads our security team.
>
> * We will have the ability to configure the Home screen, including
> choice of scopes, and the behaviour of individual scopes.
>
> * Legal notices will all be in one place, in the 'About Ubuntu' part of
> the UX, and visible in the install experience too.
>
> Mark
>
>
> --
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~unity-design
> Post to : <email address hidden>
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~unity-design
> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>
>

[YoBoY (yoboy-leguesh)]

Having the legal notice in the install experience is great, but do we keep something to inform the user on first use/login ? The person installing the OS is not always the user, and new added users never see the install process.

[Nicolò Zilio (nicolozilio)]

I think it's a great idea to insert the legal notice in the setup and integrate it on the 'About Ubuntu' dialog box.
But of course as YoBoy says, the end user rarely install Ubuntu himself so maybe there should be a dialog box that appear at first user login (naturally only if he use Unity, of course) or a default visible shortchut on the desktop pointing to 'About Ubuntu' application.
These are only my ideas so thank to anyone to discuss or improve them.

[Jessica Lambiase (siliconjey)]

Nicolò I totally agree with you: legal notices (at least) on first Unity user login would do the job. +1

Btw will this "incognito dash mode" even prevent Zeitgeist from logging/showing dash-related info (eg last used applications, last opened files...)?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Nicolò: I'd really like not to have a "EULA style" box. Users have negative feelings towards whack-a-mole popups and EULA windows between between them and the interface. User tend to dismiss them anyway but remember the annoyance.

A few years ago Mozilla tried something very similar with Firefox by adding a EULA; it was removed afterwards and replaced with tiny little bar at the top of a first-use Firefox instance that says "Know your Freedoms". Anything more than this is clunky, and the negative vibes will outweight any positive comfort benefit that can be achieved from showing it.

[Benjamin Kerensa (bkerensa)]

@Mark:

In my mind the notice in the ubiquity slideshow alone goes alongway at giving bold notice as to the changes made for those who are unaware and serves as a reasonable warning to disable said feature if they do not like it.

Clearly, this resolves all privacy concerns surrounding the feature since it gives notice while also gives allows total disablement of scopes that send outbound queries whether they be made by Canonical or Community.

Should we also now create this as a standard for future scope/lenses writing that they simply comply with this "incognito" mode?

[Quintin (quintin-vanrooyen)]

Since there is question about zeitgeist being switched off, why not have a slider for "on" (tracking and recording of activity), "local only" (only zeitgeist and no info sent over the network) and "no recording" (all recording of activity switched off) (whatever the terminology will be in the end) and then a clickable link with something along the lines of "why is this important?" that takes you to the explanation in About Ubuntu.

[Jessica Lambiase (siliconjey)]

And what about something like an user-notify on (and only on) the very first Unity login, prompting stuff like "Welcome to Ubuntu blahblah [...] Unity dash access in internet is ruled by our TOS: further info on System Settings > About Ubuntu" or something like this?

[unimatrix9 (jochemscheelings)]

Why not use the "home" icon as the default privacy mode? And all others to do the Global search, with notice and toggle switch
to turn all on / off.

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

"We will make a very bold, clear way for you to turn on and off network queries across ALL scopes for any given session in the dash. Think about this like the 'anonymous' mode in your browser. Toggle it, right there in the Dash, and you are totally certain you are not sending network traffic. We will aim to enforce this at the kernel level, hence the CC to Jamie S who leads our security team."

FYI, in thinking about this (for a while), I think I came up with a way to do this sanely that doesn't require a lot of coding effort. Approaching the scopes guys now (this may culminate into a UDS session, but I think it may not be that much work so it may not require a session.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Sounds good!

[unimatrix9 (jochemscheelings)]

This is "working around" the issue, the home should, in my humble opinion, by default be in local mode, and the switch give the user the option to include global searches, that would be in the true spirit of ubuntu! People are very sensitive about this issue , from first time users to company users.
( when the first , or default lens is a private local home, all others could do global without any problem )
Happy coding !

[Chris DeAngelis (ccubedd)]

Sharing private data should absolutly be turned off by default!

Another acceptable solution would be to have the option during unity installation.

[Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)]

The legal notice link has been removed. Also as far as i know it has been added starting from Ubuntu 12.10 which is no longer supported. I'm going to close the bug for these reasons. Please reopen if I'm wrong.