Ubuntu provides specific repositories of nonfree software, and Canonical
expressly promotes and recommends nonfree software under the Ubuntu name in
some of their distribution channels. Ubuntu offers the option to install only
free packages, which means it also offers the option to install nonfree
packages too. In addition, the version of Linux, the kernel, included in
Ubuntu contains firmware blobs.
The “Ubuntu Software Center” lists proprietary programs and free programs
jumbled together. It is hard to tell which ones are free since proprietary
programs for download at no charge are labelled “free”.
Since October 2012, Ubuntu sends personal data about users' searches to a
server belonging to Canonical, which sends back ads to buy things from
Amazon. This does not, strictly speaking, affect whether Ubuntu is free
software, but it is a violation of users' privacy. It also encourages buying
from Amazon, a company associated with DRM as well as mistreatment of
workers, authors and publishers.
This adware is one of the rare occasions in which a free software developer
persists in keeping a malicious feature in its version of a free program.
Ubuntu appears to permit commercial redistribution of exact copies with the
trademarks; removal of the trademarks is required only for modified versions.
That is an acceptable policy for trademarks. The same page, further down,
makes a vague and ominous statement about “Ubuntu patents,” without
giving enough details to show whether that constitutes aggression or not.
That page spreads confusion by using the misleading term “intellectual
property rights”, which falsely presumes that trademark law and patent law
and several other laws belong in one single conceptual framework. Use of that
term is harmful, without exception, so after making a reference to someone
else's use of the term, we should always reject it. However, that is not a
substantive issue about Ubuntu as a GNU/Linux distribution.
