[PLUG] Behaviometrics, The FSF and PureOS

Ben Koenig techkoenig at gmail.com
Thu Jan 9 08:57:52 UTC 2020


It's always an opt-in type of feature. I can't recall a specific piece of
software that gathered these metrics without asking first. it's usually
something along the lines of "FYI this is something we will do, unless you
intentionally click the button below that says no" during the installation
phase or first run. Even microsoft asks you in a way that is very clear and
obvious.

But again, it's all about misdirection. What they say is not what they do.
To be fair, I look at the Purism website and I see a marketing team that is
making the same promises everyone else already did. Google said "don't be
evil" and then they started doing evil things. Facebook said this was a
such great way to stay in touch with friends and family, then allowed
russia to impersonate american citizens on their platform. Purism says they
actually care even though everyone else doesn't... um... ok? Prove it.

I mean, this could just be an oversight on their part, but when you say you
are releasing the source for your software, you better put a god damn link
or contact on that same page. They talk about binary blobs literally and
claim that they are different and then proceed to just ramble for another 4
paragraphs. No links? Contact? What if I finish reading that page and I'm
like, yeah, lets read that source code!

Um... where is the source code?



On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 10:06 PM Mike C. <mconnors1 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  PureOS' claim"
>
> "PureOS is in complete compliance with FSF’s free distribution guidelines
> <https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html> and
> does not ship proprietary software or blobs <https://puri.sm/learn/blobs/
> >."
>
> FSF guidelines refer to malware:
> "No Malware
>
> The distro must contain no DRM, no back doors, and no spyware."
>
> I can't seem to find anything about behaviourial data collection in PureOS
> or The FSF docs.
>
> There does seem to be some pretty strong sentiment withing the FOSS
> community that any such functionality should only be by "opt-in".
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