Wait to install the shopping lens by default until 13.04

[mikelococo]

I understand that shopping lens was added post freeze, although I'm not able to find a freeze exception bug for the package. Given the short period for community feedback and the degree of contentiousness of the feature, it shouldn't be installed by default in 12.10.

The package should be available in 12.10, but not installed by default. This will provide a period of public comment on the controversial feature, during which it's broadly available for review and testing. Bugs can be raised and fixed during this period, and the feature can be enabled in 13.04 in a more mature and vetted form.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[MikhailValerie (mikhailvalerie-b)]

Freeze points exist for several reasons, one of which is to help ensure stability by giving developers time to properly test out the combined sytem and iron out any issues without introducing new complexity.

The unity shopping lens, whilst possibly providing benefit to the project on the whole, is not (in my opinion) of *importance* enough to to break standard procedure. As a lens it is trivial to install (see Ubuntu Software Centre) and easy to promote as an additional benefit to the user post install (see banner items in Ubuntu Software Centre).

Issues of contention are not helped by actions that _appear_ shady, desperate and designed to prevent negative discussion by the community. If such features are going to be a necessity in the continuing development of Ubuntu then surely using that same community to develop and promote suitable ideas and actions would be a smart move.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

FYI: Bug 1053470 contains the FFe for this feature.

[mikelococo (mikelococo)]

This bug isn't an opinion, it's a proposal for a specific technical change (to not ship unity-lens-shopping in 12.04). That proposal is supported by many facts:

1) It's a contentious feature, evidenced by the many "hot" bugs filed.
2) It's proposed for a default-on state in a widely used component (home lens).
3) It has privacy implications when compared to the previous state of home lens in 12.04. Home lens in 12.04 doesn't send queries to remote servers, shopping-lens does.
4) Those privacy implications aren't yet addressed by the privacy policy: Bug #1054741
5) And the privacy implications aren't disclosed upon use of home lens: Bug #1054782
6) At the time the feature was FFE'd, the opt-out process was undiscoverable and required uninstalling the feature entirely. There's no way to use shopping lens at all without sending all your home lens queries to a remote server: Bug #1054746
7) The feature itself results in a lousy user experience due to poor results (Bug #1053678) and inappropriate adult results that aren't tied to any age assertation (Bug #1054282)
8) Despite all of the above, the feature was introduced ***post-freeze*** with little community review: Bug 1053470 and fast tracked due to executive approval at Canonical.

It's a fact that this feature was rushed through FFE in spite of numerous problems. It's a reasonable proposal to react to that fact by rescinding FFE approval and waiting to ship until 13.04. If that's not going to happen, mark it wontfix.

[mikelococo (mikelococo)]

Previous comment should read that it's a proposal not to ship in 12.10, not in 12.04 where it didn't ship.

[papukaija (papukaija)]

This package is recommended by the unity package.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Bug report is not the best place to discuss this and I don't see it changing anyway.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[dvstin (dustin-in-linux)]

I didn't decide that this is invalid, but I added the unity-lens-shopping to "Affects" so I assume it should also be in the same state (invalid/wishlist)

[Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112)]

This bug really isn't invalid (see comment #4 and [1]). I'm setting its status to "New" and if it will not be fixed, please change its status to "Won't Fix".

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status