Addons Installer in Tools->Addons lacks license information and filter by license capability

[Tero Karvinen]

Binary package hint: firefox

Ubuntu recommends closed source, proprietary software in Firefox Add Ons.

Many recommended add ons are unclear about license terms. Some are probably closed source. Many keep user data in remote servers with unclear policies about data transfer.

To reproduce
0) With Hardy Beta
1) Open Firefox
2) Tools: Add-ons
Tab called "Recommended" opens. Many recommendations are not free software, don't meet Ubuntu policies for software inclusion and have not gone trough Ubuntu quality checks.

Recommendations seem to change daily. For example, yesterday it the first recommendation was "Clipmarks". This add-on does not even seem to state its license:
clipmarks-3.0.3-fx.xpi_FILES$ grep -irE 'licen(c|s)e' *|wc -l
0

Users should be encouraged to install add-ons packaged to Ubuntu. However, they are hidden behind a small link "Get Ubuntu Add-ons".

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Recommends is just that. It is not a needs or suggests so this is not a bug. As for the addons, In Hardy we have included a bunch of addons that prior releases didnt have. Im closing this bug as this is normal and intented use of the recommends action in update/installer

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Normally, you get a warning before installing software from universe or multiverse. Here, you get a recommendation to install software completely outside Ubuntu policies and package management.

It is not impossible that Ubuntu will recommend a piece closed source software containing spyware.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Please list the software that it recommends that is "spyware". PLease give a list of the recommends when installing firefox. Please post the output here so we can look at this bug further.

[Tero Karvinen (karvinen+launchpad)]

I have not found a case of spyware yet, but the software does seem to come outside Ubuntu quality process. I'll have a look at the list and where it comes from once I'm back at the test machine.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 03:52:49PM -0000, Tero Karvinen wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: firefox
>
> Ubuntu recommends closed source, proprietary software in Firefox Add
> Ons.
>
> Many recommended add ons are unclear about license terms. Some are
> probably closed source. Many keep user data in remote servers with
> unclear policies about data transfer.
>

 summary "Addons Installer in Tools->Addons lacks license information and filter by license capability"

 affects firefox-extensions
 status confirmed

We should discuss this upstream

 - Alexander