Comment 311 for bug 269656

Maybe the following can help a little in clarifying where the problem is and what is needed.

I think the most important drawback of a click-and-accept EULA is that it shatters the wonderfully welcoming experience of installing Ubuntu.

I migrated from Windows to Ubuntu somewhat recently. I was delighted by the impression that loving care had been put into offering me a carefully composed system, with a beautiful theme, along with impressive repositories where I can feel warmly welcome any time I want to add something to my system.

All in all it was an amazing and joyous experience. And this happy experience was much more important than the money saved. It made me warmly enthusiastic about Ubuntu in a way that I had never expected.

In this context, a series of click-through EULAs for various applications would become seriously jarring. Very little of that warmly welcoming feeling would survive.

It would be almost as bad if there's a first Web page that pushes me down with wordings like "you are consenting to be bound by the Agreement".

It's very different if software that I pick and choose from the repositories shows such EULAs. As long as it's a minority among the applications, and doesn't grow out of hand, it won't mar the feeling of a welcoming Ubuntu, since it's something outside Ubuntu that I pick myself. Then if I don't like the conditions and prefer to uninstall the software, I know clearly that the consequence of this choice is limited to the removal of that particular software.

But if it happens while I'm installing Ubuntu itself, it will inevitably ruin that delightful experience.

Having said that, maybe the default browser can go to a special first page without marring the experience. In the Fedora solution, the wording of their first page is unwelcoming and unclear, in my view. But it might work if instead it's worded as an offer to protect me against phishers, adding to this the caveat that this requires a polling that could theoretically reveal the times when I'm online and offline. If it's a concretely explained offer to help me, with a concretely worded caveat, the feeling of warm welcome remains.

The Fedora text and the Agreement that it links to make a serious mistake, in that they don't mention anti-phishing. The wording is so vague that it's impossible for the user to understand what he's "agreeing" to. This renders the "agreement" legally void, and so its only effect is to cause feelings of uncertainty. Speak up! Explain clearly! Use concrete wordings! And ban the lawyers except for final vetting.