Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Glenn English]

I just heard of DDG's offer. The idea sounds reasonable to me. I've been a 
Debian user for 10+ years and a DDG user since I first heard of them.

I suggest making DDG the default, with others as options (Google does find more 
stuff, sometimes).

-- 
Glenn English

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Ian Jackson]

Stefano Zacchiroli writes ("Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo"):
> I've just re-read this whole thread. Helped by the useful input you
> provided in it, I made up my mind and decided to go ahead with the
> agreement, according to the spirit described in the above paragraph.

Thanks.  Thanks also for the exemplary way you've conducted this
decisionmaking process.

> Last but not least, transparency. I don't know, yet, how to answer the
> many "how much" questions that have been asked in the thread. But for
> sure we will have to be public about that once we have an answer. I'll
> check with the auditors and trusted orgs to ensure this kind of
> donations are clearly marked as such.  If at any time we will become
> scared by the amount, we can decide to quit.

I think this last is an important point.  The character of the Mozilla
project has changed considerably, arguably as a result of the influx
of large amounts of money from exactly this kind of source.

So we should keep an eye on this.  If the amount of money gets too big
I suggest we consider forwarding it to some broader charity for whom
it will be less of massive alteration to their finances.  (Eg, EFF,
FSF.)

But in practice I don't think in this case this is likely to be an
issue.

> For the same transparency reasons, I also suggest that maintainers of
> the involved packages document where appropriate (e.g. in README.Debian)
> that they have implemented the t=debian query string, and why.

Very sensible.

Ian.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20373.24352.33764.788...@chiark.greenend.org.uk

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

[ catching up with some old discussion ]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:16:09PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> All in all, as a project we should simply see the agreement as something
> like "for every web browser in Debian who decides to use t=something,
> Debian will receive donations". If, due to the usual way we maintain
> packages, including upstream relationships, that set will shrink to
> nothing, too bad. The agreement will simply allow the set to exist, it
> will not magically fill it with browsers that implement t=something.

I've just re-read this whole thread. Helped by the useful input you
provided in it, I made up my mind and decided to go ahead with the
agreement, according to the spirit described in the above paragraph.

As per the thread, it seems to me that most of the arguments presented
have been in favor of going ahead. There have also been arguments
against, mainly about (1) privacy and (2) relationships with upstream.

For the first concern (privacy), the problem really is much bigger than
the query string (browsers and OS are identifiable in many more ways)
and our default browser already send a rather peculiar and easy to
identify User-Agent string. There have been interesting discussions
about implementing a "big privacy switch". I find that an intriguing
idea, but it requires consideration of way more applications than
browsers.

For both concerns, I see them as something that maintainers should
already care about anyhow, and that will remain unchanged by the choice
of accepting DDG donations. In particular, good relationships with
upstream is something we pursue no matter what. If and when a search
engine query string will become a source of tension with our upstream,
the maintainers should discuss with them and look for a solution, as
they did before. I don't see how accepting DDG donations would change
anything in this respect.

Last but not least, transparency. I don't know, yet, how to answer the
many "how much" questions that have been asked in the thread. But for
sure we will have to be public about that once we have an answer. I'll
check with the auditors and trusted orgs to ensure this kind of
donations are clearly marked as such.  If at any time we will become
scared by the amount, we can decide to quit.

For the same transparency reasons, I also suggest that maintainers of
the involved packages document where appropriate (e.g. in README.Debian)
that they have implemented the t=debian query string, and why.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 07:02:44PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Is DuckDuckGo aware of the fact that Debian is upstream of a number of
> derivative distributions that just import our packages, and if we modify
> our packages to do this, other distributions will be counted as "Debian"
> for their revenue-sharing purposes even if they aren't exactly?

They do. To be sure it was the case, and thanks to your suggestion, I've
raised this point. They are well aware of the upstream-downstream
continuum that exists between software authors and distributions, as
well as among distributions themselves.

> Related, do they realize that we cannot and will not enforce any of the
> terms of their contract with us on any derivative distribution that
> happens to import Debian web browser packages?

They are fine with the fact that we will not make any efforts to enforce
their terms with our downstreams and, dually, with the fact that our
upstreams will not be responsible for our changes, in case they've
agreements. (Even though, for reasons discussed elsewhere in this
thread, we should not be in that business.)

Note that nothing in the draft agreement made me think that we were
responsible for downstream changes, but checking didn't hurt.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 09:25:48AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:06:46 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli  
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > > DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
> > > > to do so, by using the search URL
> > > > https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian
> > > 
> > > The privacy implications of this need to be considered. At least for
> > > Chromium there is no indication in the user agent that the user is
> > > using Debian.
> > 
> > Thanks for pointing this out. Let's consider them then.
> 
> Should this not be a debconf question, along the lines of popcon, but as
> a machine wide:
> 
>Do you mind trading a little privacy to allow us to declare your use
>of Debian to search engines, and thus possibly benefit from revenue
>sharing arising from your searches?

I think this is a bad idea. If you don't do such a thing, and you leak
privacy, no harm done. If, however, you do implement such a thing, then
*every* piece of software that *might* expose that the user is running
Debian *must* be changed so it knows about this option and removes all
mention of Debian in its external communications.

And what to do about the mention of "iceweasel" in the iceweasel
User-Agent string? Is that Debian, too?

This quickly degrades to a slippery slope of things I would not want to
see us go down.

-- 
The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by
the following formula:

pi zz a


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120402085351.ga13...@grep.be

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Kumar Appaiah]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:57:15PM -0500, Kumar Appaiah wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 04:45:33PM +, Clint Adams wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 07:50:06PM -0500, Kumar Appaiah wrote:
> > > maintainers aggressively alter the default User-Agent or some other
> > > indicator which would deny upstream their rightful due. Would you agree?
> > 
> > I reject and resent the idea that any software project has
> > the entitlement to profit off of my web traffic.
> > 
> > Treating the change of a query string as theft is as ridiculous
> > as broadcast TV stations telling me I'm robbing them by
> > skipping commercials.
> 
> I wholly agree and I was not suggesting that we deny upstreams their
> rightful due under any circumstance. I was also shocked by the Banshee
> episode.

Actually, it was pointed out that this wasn't the argument that was
being made, and that there was an inconsistency in what I have said
above. Apologies.

One way of looking at this is: if the project is "free" software, then
the end-user (he/she/distro) has a right to edit the source and shape
the web traffic the way they want. Calling out users and downstreams
for altering this behaviour goes against calling the software
"free". I guess this is what Clint was saying.

Thanks and sorry again.

Kumar
-- 
If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah.
-- Unknown source


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20120331194453.ga3...@bluemoon.alumni.iitm.ac.in

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Kumar Appaiah]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 04:45:33PM +, Clint Adams wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 07:50:06PM -0500, Kumar Appaiah wrote:
> > maintainers aggressively alter the default User-Agent or some other
> > indicator which would deny upstream their rightful due. Would you agree?
> 
> I reject and resent the idea that any software project has
> the entitlement to profit off of my web traffic.
> 
> Treating the change of a query string as theft is as ridiculous
> as broadcast TV stations telling me I'm robbing them by
> skipping commercials.

I wholly agree and I was not suggesting that we deny upstreams their
rightful due under any circumstance. I was also shocked by the Banshee
episode.

Kumar
-- 
#if _FP_W_TYPE_SIZE < 32
#error "Here's a nickel kid.  Go buy yourself a real computer."
#endif
-- linux/arch/sparc64/double.h


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20120331035715.ga10...@bluemoon.alumni.iitm.ac.in

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Clint Adams]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 07:50:06PM -0500, Kumar Appaiah wrote:
> maintainers aggressively alter the default User-Agent or some other
> indicator which would deny upstream their rightful due. Would you agree?

I reject and resent the idea that any software project has
the entitlement to profit off of my web traffic.

Treating the change of a query string as theft is as ridiculous
as broadcast TV stations telling me I'm robbing them by
skipping commercials.

I was horrified to see this attitude espoused in the Ubuntu-Banshee
episode.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120330164533.ga28...@scru.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

just to clear up a few things zack and me just discussed on IRC:

Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:00:04PM +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> > Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > > > Anther interesting thing in there is a requirement that we inform DDG
> > > > thirty days in advance of releasing changes to the implementation of
> > > > the links to it.
> > 
> > I have some bad feeling which cries "non-free" here, because that
> > sounds a lot like "no modification allowed".
> 
> What?!? No. We can do what we want with the code, which is Free Software
> and DDG has not the power to change its license.

Well, the wording my upstream used to explain what agreement he has
with DDG sounded way more restrictive than it really seems and (in
retroperspective) was likely emotionally touched.

> Simply, if we stop using the search link we stop receiving donations
> and we might have to reinstate the agreement again to restart
> receiving donations.

Ok, if there's no penalty, it's fine for me.

Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
  `-|  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120330095619.gs17...@sym.noone.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:00:04PM +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > > Anther interesting thing in there is a requirement that we inform DDG
> > > thirty days in advance of releasing changes to the implementation of
> > > the links to it.
> 
> I have some bad feeling which cries "non-free" here, because that
> sounds a lot like "no modification allowed".

What?!? No. We can do what we want with the code, which is Free Software
and DDG has not the power to change its license. Simply, if we stop
using the search link we stop receiving donations and we might have to
reinstate the agreement again to restart receiving donations.

> ... or may have to return some of the donations?

I really appreciate collective nitpicking, as it helps in discovering
concerns that a single mind wouldn't have thought of (especially if that
mind is mine). But I can hardly imagine how making up things would help
in this discussion.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 08:04:10PM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> > - The main risk I see in similar agreements is influencing our technical
> >   choices by the revenues. By making clear --- to them and to us ---
> >   that maintainers should be free to make technical decisions no matter
> >   the agreements, I'm relatively confident this risk is moot.
> 
> How much money is expected?  I'm worried that strange things might
> happen if it's a significant amount.

I've asked for estimations of that, based on User-Agent statistics that
they might have. I've been answered that they don't have such statistics
(although it was not clear whether of "they = DDG" or "they = the person
I've been talking to" is the case). It looks like we'll have to try if
we want to find this out.

Considering we're talking about a non-default search option, I agree
with Mike that the share of our searches will be quite low. But I've no
idea how that would map to actual donations.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Tollef Fog Heen]

]] Stefano Zacchiroli 

> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:04:16AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > My point is that where the money goes should be a choice of the user,
> > with the default suggested to the user determined by upstream. Debian
> > should exert no influence over that choice, except maybe asking
> > upstream to add us to the choices available to the user.
> 
> This is a very interesting aspect of this discussion. In fact it is the
> tip of a much more general discussion we could have, although I suspect
> it could go on for a long while... I don't think Debian as a Project has
> a position on that matter, at least not yet. What happens now is that,
> once more, the choice is up to the individual package maintainers, as
> per Debian default governance model.

I think this is a discussion we should have, but perhaps not right now
in this very thread.

[...]

> All in all, as a project we should simply see the agreement as something
> like "for every web browser in Debian who decides to use t=something,
> Debian will receive donations". If, due to the usual way we maintain
> packages, including upstream relationships, that set will shrink to
> nothing, too bad. The agreement will simply allow the set to exist, it
> will not magically fill it with browsers that implement t=something.

Based on this, I don't see any downsides for us in accepting such an
agreement, only possible upsides, so I think we should do it.

Cheers,
-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87d37u3894@qurzaw.varnish-software.com

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Russ Allbery]

"dE ."  writes:
> On 03/30/12 07:32, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> Is DuckDuckGo aware of the fact that Debian is upstream of a number of
>> derivative distributions that just import our packages, and if we
>> modify our packages to do this, other distributions will be counted as
>> "Debian" for their revenue-sharing purposes even if they aren't
>> exactly?

>> For example, Ubuntu would inherit this behavior for the web browsers
>> they just import from Debian, unless they went out of their way to
>> change it.

>> Related, do they realize that we cannot and will not enforce any of the
>> terms of their contract with us on any derivative distribution that
>> happens to import Debian web browser packages?

> Ubuntu uses FF.

This discussion isn't only about Firefox/Iceweasel.  It's about any web
browser in Debian that has a search box capability, so far as I understand
it.  And Ubuntu isn't the only Debian derivative.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87obrewtq0@windlord.stanford.edu

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[dE .]

On 03/30/12 07:32, Russ Allbery wrote:

Stefano Zacchiroli  writes:


DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
to do so, by using the search URL
https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian . Mike, with his
maintainer hat on, is fine with using such a search string in
Iceweasel. Other browsers, if the respective maintainers want to, might
end up doing the same.

Is DuckDuckGo aware of the fact that Debian is upstream of a number of
derivative distributions that just import our packages, and if we modify
our packages to do this, other distributions will be counted as "Debian"
for their revenue-sharing purposes even if they aren't exactly?

For example, Ubuntu would inherit this behavior for the web browsers they
just import from Debian, unless they went out of their way to change it.

Related, do they realize that we cannot and will not enforce any of the
terms of their contract with us on any derivative distribution that
happens to import Debian web browser packages?



Ubuntu uses FF.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f74ed18.8090...@gmail.com

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Russ Allbery]

Stefano Zacchiroli  writes:

> DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
> to do so, by using the search URL
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian . Mike, with his
> maintainer hat on, is fine with using such a search string in
> Iceweasel. Other browsers, if the respective maintainers want to, might
> end up doing the same.

Is DuckDuckGo aware of the fact that Debian is upstream of a number of
derivative distributions that just import our packages, and if we modify
our packages to do this, other distributions will be counted as "Debian"
for their revenue-sharing purposes even if they aren't exactly?

For example, Ubuntu would inherit this behavior for the web browsers they
just import from Debian, unless they went out of their way to change it.

Related, do they realize that we cannot and will not enforce any of the
terms of their contract with us on any derivative distribution that
happens to import Debian web browser packages?

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87pqbuyhff@windlord.stanford.edu

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Charles Plessy]

Le Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 07:50:06PM -0500, Kumar Appaiah a écrit :
> 
> Frankly, I don't see why both cannot agree. By coming up with an
> arrangement for sharing Debian searches and NOT changing $BROWSER
> defaults, you are just allowing those hits to be recorder as $BROWSER
> (upstream) hits as opposed to Debian hits, and Debian is not
> compensated. This doesn't adversely affect upstream unless the
> maintainers aggressively alter the default User-Agent or some other
> indicator which would deny upstream their rightful due. Would you agree?

Hi Kumar

If that due were rightful, we would accept in Debian some works where the
license requires the user to share with the upstream developers the profits he
makes with their software.  But this is clearly non-free.  So the problem
is not about who has the right to get the money.

I think that there are two problems.

a) Deviations from upstream defaults for no technical reason.

b) Ad-hoc short terms solutions to a more general problem, motivated by the fear
   of losing the opportunity of reveiving money.

Service providers need feedback to better operate.  This is observed in many
human-designed and nature-evolved complex systems.  Ourselves, we have Popocon
for that purpose.  But in the case of web services or web browsers, this whole
uncoordinated competition at each level of the food chain for inserting a name
or changing the defaults is not going to be practical.

DDG's time and money, together with the other players in the browser/searcher
field, will be better spent in working and agreeing on a standard, with clear
description on the purposes, mechanisms and functions, and how it serves the
protection of privacy and the reduction of monopolies, which can be integrated
in the Linux distributions and configured by the users.

That makes less money for Debian, but a better-working ecosystem, of which we
will also benefit.

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120330011806.gd6...@falafel.plessy.net

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Kumar Appaiah]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:50:03PM +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> I though think that the best way for all free software projects is to
> not make any such agreements to not impose any restrictions on other
> contributors to the project. I though do realize that not all projects
> can afford that.
> 
> Disclaimer: I haven't read the whole discussion yet, just grepped
> through it (mutt patterns FTW! :-) to find the thread about upstream
> projects and checked if conkeror was already mentioned.

Frankly, I don't see why both cannot agree. By coming up with an
arrangement for sharing Debian searches and NOT changing $BROWSER
defaults, you are just allowing those hits to be recorder as $BROWSER
(upstream) hits as opposed to Debian hits, and Debian is not
compensated. This doesn't adversely affect upstream unless the
maintainers aggressively alter the default User-Agent or some other
indicator which would deny upstream their rightful due. Would you agree?

Thanks.

Kumar
-- 
We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their
correct technical name... paenguins.
-- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20120330005006.gb19...@bluemoon.alumni.iitm.ac.in

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > Anther interesting thing in there is a requirement that we inform DDG
> > thirty days in advance of releasing changes to the implementation of
> > the links to it.

I have some bad feeling which cries "non-free" here, because that
sounds a lot like "no modification allowed".

> It mentions before "product release". We can ask to clarify that will be
> interpreted, in the context of Debian, as stable releases. But even in
> the most strict interpretation (i.e. an upload), what we risk is that
> the agreement will be recessed and we stop receiving the donations.

... or may have to return some of the donations?

Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
  `-|  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120329210004.gk17...@sym.noone.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Steffen Möller wrote:
> > On 12-03-27 at 10:26am, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> >> Dear Project Members,
> >>   thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
> >> I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
> >> engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
> >> Project.
> >>
> >> [1] https://duckduckgo.com/
> [..]
> >> I welcome feedback on this matter,
>
> The problem I see is with a competition with upstream. If we in any
> way lower the impact firefox has for google, then this has a direct
> effect not only on firefox but also on our relation with them and
> other upstreams.

Same here. And I do package software which has such an agreement with
DuckDuckGo:

  http://repo.or.cz/w/conkeror.git/commitdiff/7c0cd5aa

And even if I wouldn't see myself as part of upstream (and the money
goes to those upstream devs hosting the project's infrastructure -- of
which I'm not part of), I would say that we should at no point replace
upstream's markers with ours. (Removing them, but not adding different
ones is a different discussion, though, and I currently have no
opinion about that.)

Most of our upstream projects are small and are neither as well-known
as Debian as a whole nor do most of them receive so many donations
outside of the internet as we do. And the majority of the code of the
software we distribute is not written by us but by them.

I though think that the best way for all free software projects is to
not make any such agreements to not impose any restrictions on other
contributors to the project. I though do realize that not all projects
can afford that.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the whole discussion yet, just grepped
through it (mutt patterns FTW! :-) to find the thread about upstream
projects and checked if conkeror was already mentioned.

Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
  `-|  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120329205002.gj17...@sym.noone.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Florian Weimer]

* Stefano Zacchiroli:

> - The main risk I see in similar agreements is influencing our technical
>   choices by the revenues. By making clear --- to them and to us ---
>   that maintainers should be free to make technical decisions no matter
>   the agreements, I'm relatively confident this risk is moot.

How much money is expected?  I'm worried that strange things might
happen if it's a significant amount.

(I'm mainly concerned with the 25% option, the 50% option seems out of
the question for unrelated reasons.)


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/8762dnnv1h@mid.deneb.enyo.de

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Florian Weimer]

* Mike Hommey:

> With my iceweasel maintainer hat on, I won't start to consider ddg as a
> default until it at least matches the user experience the current
> default engine provides, including search suggestions and localized
> results (the latter requires some manual work ; the former lacks
> server-side support).

Curiously, localized search does not work for me in Iceweasel (on
squeeze), and this is actually a feature because I want to see
original content, and not a (potentially ad-infested) repost from
someone "local".


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/877gy3nv45@mid.deneb.enyo.de

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:04:16AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> No. Whether or not browsers should identify the OS they are running on
> is not part of my point (I think they should not).

FWIW, at present in Debian that choice is up to browser maintainers.
What we're discussing here will not change in anything that aspect, nor
I would want to.

> My point is that where the money goes should be a choice of the user,
> with the default suggested to the user determined by upstream. Debian
> should exert no influence over that choice, except maybe asking
> upstream to add us to the choices available to the user.

This is a very interesting aspect of this discussion. In fact it is the
tip of a much more general discussion we could have, although I suspect
it could go on for a long while... I don't think Debian as a Project has
a position on that matter, at least not yet. What happens now is that,
once more, the choice is up to the individual package maintainers, as
per Debian default governance model.

I'm sure DDG is contacting all _distributors_ of web browsers proposing
similar arrangements, because it is distributors who get the browsers to
the users that will do web searches.

As upstream authors also act as distributors, I'm sure DDG is also
contacting them. And if there will ever be a conflict (e.g. upstream has
t=upstream and we have an agreement for t=debian), I'm all for
contacting upstream and let them decide what they want to do with the t=
thingie in Debian. I surely would do that if I were the maintainer.

But at present, that t= thingie does not seem to exist upstream, or at
least I can't see it in iceweasel configuration on my sid machine. The
potential DDG donations that could benefit Free Software --- either at
Debian or at some of our upstreams --- simply get lost. I think that is
worse than driving those donations to Debian.

All in all, as a project we should simply see the agreement as something
like "for every web browser in Debian who decides to use t=something,
Debian will receive donations". If, due to the usual way we maintain
packages, including upstream relationships, that set will shrink to
nothing, too bad. The agreement will simply allow the set to exist, it
will not magically fill it with browsers that implement t=something.


Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:27:05AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> Probably you missed the part of the email that says we should add
> t=debian by default to every new DDG search URL? I would suggest that
> it should be up to the users what t= should be set to when sending
> search requests to DDG, not Debian.

To be fair, they'd be fine with "t=iceweasel" as well, as I've mentioned
in https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00120.html

> If DDG wants to donate money to Debian based on User-Agent then great,
> but I don't see how they can do that yet, given that many browsers in
> Debian probably don't mention Debian in User-Agent.

I've also checked this option, although indirectly, by asking if they
already have statistics to share based on User-Agent. The answer has
been negative. All in all, it is pretty clear that the person we're
interacting with has that option to propose, i.e. a rather standard
agreement whose underlying technical infrastructure is not his to
change. We can accept or give up, but it's likely not in our power to
impose how they do the accounting. That's life.


Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 09:27:38AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> I would lean towards doing nothing and pointing them at our donations page:
> http://www.debian.org/donations#money_donations

I already did. I've also shared DDG contacts with the DebConf
fund-raising team that is going to contact them for DebConf sponsoring.

If you also meant to imply that the two fund-raising activities (direct
sponsorship and the revenue sharing agreement) are mutually exclusive, I
disagree. FWIW, I don't think they're detrimental one another in terms
of collected donations either, because:

- donations is a one time effort that need periodic explicit action by
  both parties (us pinging them and them deciding "should we do that
  again?") to work in the long run

- for companies, the two are likely to be on different budget lines: one
  for "marketing", the other for "partnerships"

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[vangelis mouhtsis]

Στις 29/03/2012 10:34 πμ, ο/η Paul Wise έγραψε:

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:


I'm surprised by the notion that merely sending the string 'debian' to the
search engine is construed to be detrimental of my privacy. While indeed
hypothetically sharing some bit of information, it's rather high-level
information about somebody which I really doubt would influence anyone's
life in any meaningful way if it's 'leaked'.

Privacy is only a secondary concern for me here.

And what about freedom?

cheers
gnugr


--

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Paul Wise]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:

> I'm surprised by the notion that merely sending the string 'debian' to the
> search engine is construed to be detrimental of my privacy. While indeed
> hypothetically sharing some bit of information, it's rather high-level
> information about somebody which I really doubt would influence anyone's
> life in any meaningful way if it's 'leaked'.

Privacy is only a secondary concern for me here.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/CAKTje6ErHDB-=1KfYTHxdLA_7go=0EZS=t5tanfwi+4pamh...@mail.gmail.com

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 29 mar 12, 09:04:16, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
> On Thu, March 29, 2012 04:27, Paul Wise wrote:
> > Probably you missed the part of the email that says we should add
> > t=debian by default to every new DDG search URL? I would suggest that
> > it should be up to the users what t= should be set to when sending
> > search requests to DDG, not Debian.


> 
> I'm surprised by the notion that merely sending the string 'debian' to the
> search engine is construed to be detrimental of my privacy. While indeed
> hypothetically sharing some bit of information, it's rather high-level
> information about somebody which I really doubt would influence anyone's
> life in any meaningful way if it's 'leaked'.

Interestingly DDG thinks otherwise
https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html#s1
http://donttrack.us/
 
Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 28 mar 12, 20:56:31, Kumar Appaiah wrote:
> 
> The current default for some browsers in Debian informs webmasters
> about which browser is being used. The user can, naturally, change it
> to suit his/her needs. How does merely using this string to track hits
> to DDG (with no changes to the default user-agent) change anything for
> the user? They can track us anyway, right now, right?

According to their Privacy Policy they intentionally don't
https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html#s3

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Thijs Kinkhorst]

On Thu, March 29, 2012 04:27, Paul Wise wrote:
> Probably you missed the part of the email that says we should add
> t=debian by default to every new DDG search URL? I would suggest that
> it should be up to the users what t= should be set to when sending
> search requests to DDG, not Debian.

I'm surprised by the notion that merely sending the string 'debian' to the
search engine is construed to be detrimental of my privacy. While indeed
hypothetically sharing some bit of information, it's rather high-level
information about somebody which I really doubt would influence anyone's
life in any meaningful way if it's 'leaked'.

Privacy law discerns certain categories of information that require
protection (like your home address) and categories that require even more
stringent protection (like race or religion). We should obviously strive
to do better than the minimum standards of such laws, but the boolean 'is
Debian user' (of which there are millions in the world) is in my view far
removed from what actually constitutes disclosure worth worrying about.

The average request, containing an IP-address, User-Agent and plugin
information already discloses so much information about a user's computing
environment that my opinion on the DDG-proposal is not at all influenced
by the mere fact that it requires adding a t=debian parameter. Someone can
 know the brand of my bike when parked in front of my house. That doesn't
make me uneasy at all.


Cheers,
Thijs


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/bf6cd7f5dab285ab82906b37d7a87d49.squir...@wm.kinkhorst.nl

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Kumar Appaiah]

Dear Paul,

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:04:16AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > Ah, I miswrote. What I meant was, that if you use vanilla Iceweasel,
> > you can already tell that that hit was from a Debian machine. You do
> > need a user-agent swticher (or equivalent), as you rightly say, to
> > switch what is sent as user-agent.
> 
> AFAICT, that isn't true, unless you think that Iceweasel will never be
> available on non-Debian platforms.

You are right.

> > Currently, if I use Iceweasel to search on Google using it's default
> > home page, it appends a "client=iceweasel-a". Do you imply that this
> > setting should be reverted?
> 
> This thread is about DDG, so your question is OT. I don't use the
> Iceweasel search widget, so it doesn't affect me, but I would think
> the User-Agent HTTP header is enough to let Google know which web
> browser users are using. If the client= parameter has some affect on
> money, it really should be named properly.

Well, I'd disagree here. The question is whether we wish to have
settings which reveal to a webmaster what settings are being used. By
default, Iceweasel in Debian does provide an indication to Google that
the query is likely from a Debian machine; whether Google is using
that or not is a different matter, but that information is being
provided anyway. One way to look at this would be to ask why this
could not be repeated with DDG (adding a client= or the like). Or, an
alternate way to maintain consistency would be to remove the client=
for Google as well (without loss of functionality?).

> > In other words, are you not strictly opposed to them looking for these
> > strings and finding them, but it should be up to the user to decide
> > whether or not they would like these strings identifying Debian to be
> > sent. Is that correct?
> 
> No. Whether or not browsers should identify the OS they are running on
> is not part of my point (I think they should not). My point is that
> where the money goes should be a choice of the user, with the default
> suggested to the user determined by upstream. Debian should exert no
> influence over that choice, except maybe asking upstream to add us to
> the choices available to the user.

I agree with this. Thank you.

Kumar
-- 
"...very few phenomena can pull someone out of Deep Hack Mode, with two
noted exceptions: being struck by lightning, or worse, your *computer*
being struck by lightning."
(By Matt Welsh)


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20120329031234.ga12...@bluemoon.alumni.iitm.ac.in

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Paul Wise]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Kumar Appaiah wrote:

> Ah, I miswrote. What I meant was, that if you use vanilla Iceweasel,
> you can already tell that that hit was from a Debian machine. You do
> need a user-agent swticher (or equivalent), as you rightly say, to
> switch what is sent as user-agent.

AFAICT, that isn't true, unless you think that Iceweasel will never be
available on non-Debian platforms.

> Currently, if I use Iceweasel to search on Google using it's default
> home page, it appends a "client=iceweasel-a". Do you imply that this
> setting should be reverted?

This thread is about DDG, so your question is OT. I don't use the
Iceweasel search widget, so it doesn't affect me, but I would think
the User-Agent HTTP header is enough to let Google know which web
browser users are using. If the client= parameter has some affect on
money, it really should be named properly.

> In other words, are you not strictly opposed to them looking for these
> strings and finding them, but it should be up to the user to decide
> whether or not they would like these strings identifying Debian to be
> sent. Is that correct?

No. Whether or not browsers should identify the OS they are running on
is not part of my point (I think they should not). My point is that
where the money goes should be a choice of the user, with the default
suggested to the user determined by upstream. Debian should exert no
influence over that choice, except maybe asking upstream to add us to
the choices available to the user.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/CAKTje6FQEm-e7W9Z6c=demniveezqnbqayzb_d0wandeb7l...@mail.gmail.com

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Kumar Appaiah]

Dear Paul,

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:27:05AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Kumar Appaiah wrote:
> 
> > The current default for some browsers in Debian informs webmasters
> > about which browser is being used.
> 
> I think you mean "all browsers" rather than "some browsers"? Are there
> actually browsers that do not send the User-Agent HTTP header by
> default? I'm using xul-ext-useragentswitcher to disable sending the
> User-Agent header but I doubt any browsers will ever do that by
> default.

Ah, I miswrote. What I meant was, that if you use vanilla Iceweasel,
you can already tell that that hit was from a Debian machine. You do
need a user-agent swticher (or equivalent), as you rightly say, to
switch what is sent as user-agent.

> > The user can, naturally, change it
> > to suit his/her needs. How does merely using this string to track hits
> > to DDG (with no changes to the default user-agent) change anything for
> > the user? They can track us anyway, right now, right?
> 
> Probably you missed the part of the email that says we should add
> t=debian by default to every new DDG search URL? I would suggest that
> it should be up to the users what t= should be set to when sending
> search requests to DDG, not Debian.

Currently, if I use Iceweasel to search on Google using it's default
home page, it appends a "client=iceweasel-a". Do you imply that this
setting should be reverted?

> If DDG wants to donate money to Debian based on User-Agent then great,
> but I don't see how they can do that yet, given that many browsers in
> Debian probably don't mention Debian in User-Agent. Of the ones I
> tested, only elinks and epiphany-browser do that.

In other words, are you not strictly opposed to them looking for these
strings and finding them, but it should be up to the user to decide
whether or not they would like these strings identifying Debian to be
sent. Is that correct?

Thank you for clarifying.

Kumar

-- 
Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely
unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something
completely new.
-- Linus Torvalds


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20120329024146.ga9...@bluemoon.alumni.iitm.ac.in

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Paul Wise]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Kumar Appaiah wrote:

> The current default for some browsers in Debian informs webmasters
> about which browser is being used.

I think you mean "all browsers" rather than "some browsers"? Are there
actually browsers that do not send the User-Agent HTTP header by
default? I'm using xul-ext-useragentswitcher to disable sending the
User-Agent header but I doubt any browsers will ever do that by
default.

> The user can, naturally, change it
> to suit his/her needs. How does merely using this string to track hits
> to DDG (with no changes to the default user-agent) change anything for
> the user? They can track us anyway, right now, right?

Probably you missed the part of the email that says we should add
t=debian by default to every new DDG search URL? I would suggest that
it should be up to the users what t= should be set to when sending
search requests to DDG, not Debian.

If DDG wants to donate money to Debian based on User-Agent then great,
but I don't see how they can do that yet, given that many browsers in
Debian probably don't mention Debian in User-Agent. Of the ones I
tested, only elinks and epiphany-browser do that.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/CAKTje6Gz=j5dtd4z+jpuq3unktgfgfuqy47bff2ikpaxkrm...@mail.gmail.com

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Kumar Appaiah]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 09:27:38AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> I would lean towards doing nothing and pointing them at our donations page:
> 
> http://www.debian.org/donations#money_donations
> 
> If we want to spend time on doing anything else, it should be flexible
> enough that the outcome is chosen by the user, not Debian.

Maybe I did not understand it correctly in spite of reading through
the thread, so forgive me if I am repeating something or am incorrect.

The current default for some browsers in Debian informs webmasters
about which browser is being used. The user can, naturally, change it
to suit his/her needs. How does merely using this string to track hits
to DDG (with no changes to the default user-agent) change anything for
the user? They can track us anyway, right now, right?

Thanks.

Kumar
-- 
Be warned that typing \fBkillall \fIname\fP may not have the desired
effect on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
-- From the killall manual page


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20120329015630.ga4...@bluemoon.alumni.iitm.ac.in

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Paul Wise]

I would lean towards doing nothing and pointing them at our donations page:

http://www.debian.org/donations#money_donations

If we want to spend time on doing anything else, it should be flexible
enough that the outcome is chosen by the user, not Debian.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/caktje6e025xk-imp65bw1m-po4aemvjmzfw-jz6emykaimn...@mail.gmail.com

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Charles Plessy]

Le Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:26:18AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit :
> 
> [1] https://duckduckgo.com/
> 
> What they propose is:
> 
> - donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
>   that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option in
>   a web browser
...
> DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
> to do so, by using the search URL
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian . Mike, with his
> maintainer hat on, is fine with using such a search string in
> Iceweasel. Other browsers, if the respective maintainers want to, might
> end up doing the same.

Dear all,

my feeling about DDG's proposition is that it reminds me similar attempts to
automatically collect users statistics, against which we usually take a hard
line.  In case of science packages (I hope you are not tired of this...), it
can for instance be mandatory registration forms, non-free license terms, etc.
Users statistics is a crucial information for some projects, which can
influence whether they continue or are terminated, and it is very hard for us
to push Debian's principles against this perspective.

One main difference is that DDG proposes to pay to obtain an exception to the
rule.  Taken together with the trademarks, where the projects that can buy one
can make restrictions that the projects that only use copyright licenses can
not, it gives me the feeling that we are being strong with the weak, and weak
with the strong.

Adding "&t=debian" to search URLs bring no direct technical benefit for the
users.  DDG has a nice policy about privacy, but for the rest it looks like an
elaborated proxy to make Yahoo queries, with a bit of enhancements for the
keywords that can be found in Wikipedia and other mainstream sites.  All in
all, it is not free software.  I think that it is great to have it available in
the search box, and actually, it was already there before they made their
propositions.  So their "25%" proposition is mostly about tracking users.

I think that we should not add tracking features by default.  This said, having
a partnership working in an opt-in manner like Popcon could be an insteresting
experiment, if there are volunteers to run it.

DDG also makes direct donations to Free Software projects
(http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/02/duckduckgo-foss-donations-2010.html
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/duckduckgo-foss-donations-2011.html 
).
I think that this is the way to go: receiving donation from projects which 
use Debian and want Debian to continue.  In the case of DDG, it means that we
need to outcompete FreeBSD...

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120329004858.gc20...@falafel.plessy.net

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Clint Adams]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 09:25:48AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
>Do you mind trading a little privacy to allow us to declare your use
>of Debian to search engines, and thus possibly benefit from revenue
>sharing arising from your searches?

I think this would risk implying that we are in some other ways
promoting privacy in the user's web browsing experience, when
in fact we are not.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120328192810.ga28...@scru.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Peter Samuelson]

[Philip Hands]
> Should this not be a debconf question, along the lines of popcon, but as
> a machine wide:
> 
>Do you mind trading a little privacy to allow us to declare your use
>of Debian to search engines, and thus possibly benefit from revenue
>sharing arising from your searches?

Why even bring up the money?  The question of "should we expose that
you're running Debian" is so much bigger than DDG.

- Debian-specific 'User-Agent' string in some (most?) browsers

- Debian-specific default home page portal thingy for some browsers

- {n}.debian.pool.ntp.org default NTP server list (telling the DNS
  admins of pool.ntp.org)

- Default apache index.html (or is that Debian-specific these days - it
  used to be, at least)

- Debian-specific sshd banner

Granted, the last two are server side, not client side, but the point
is, there's all sorts of ways for the rest of the Internet to know
you're using Debian, not just nmap.
-- 
Peter Samuelson | org-tld!p12n!peter | http://p12n.org/


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120328150139.gb2...@p12n.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Andreas Tille]

Hi,

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 01:32:18PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Steffen Möller wrote:
> > The problem I see is with a
> > competition with upstream. If we  in any way lower the impact firefox
> > has for google, then this has a direct effect not only on firefox but
> > also on our relation with them and other upstreams.
> 
> That is what I came here to say. It needs to be considered carefully.

Sidenote:  Do we really have a good relation to firefox?  We do not have
a package with this name and I have heard people that *exactly* this
would be the reason not to use Debian.  Not that I would agree upon this
opinion, just mentioning it.

Kind regards

   Andreas.

PS: Perhaps I should have changed the subject - but I do not intend to
say more in this firefox/iceweasel discussion.  In case you mind
answering about this topic please change the subject.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120328093105.gf8...@an3as.eu

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Luca Filipozzi]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:52:49AM +0200, Steffen Moeller wrote:
> How much money are we talking about? Less than $5000? More? Difficult
> to say, between 1000 and 1?

Per the recent sprint report, hardware is becoming one of the biggest
expense categories for Debian.

I support and applaud Stefano's effort to secure additional funding for
the project.

While I'd prefer having unencumberd cash donations and preferential
(manufacturer's internal cost) hardware pricing, I'm willing to explore
the DDG relationship, especially if we offer users the ability to opt
out (or in).

-- 
Luca Filipozzi


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120328091034.ga20...@emyr.net

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Steffen Möller]

On 03/28/2012 10:25 AM, Philip Hands wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:06:46 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli  
> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
 DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
 to do so, by using the search URL
 https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian
>>> The privacy implications of this need to be considered. At least for
>>> Chromium there is no indication in the user agent that the user is
>>> using Debian.
>> Thanks for pointing this out. Let's consider them then.
> Should this not be a debconf question, along the lines of popcon, but as
> a machine wide:
>
>Do you mind trading a little privacy to allow us to declare your use
>of Debian to search engines, and thus possibly benefit from revenue
>sharing arising from your searches?
>
> No idea if that should default to yes or no.  It also might be better to
> make that less search specific.
>
> We could also have a debconf question for setting the default search
> engine across all browsers, which defaults to unset, and is low
> priority, so that people can preseed it, but the browser packagers get
> to make their own decisions if the value has not been set.
I think we give up too much of our principles with that. DDG loudly
states not to track us on their pages and the first thing we talk about
is to tell them more about ourselves. I find that ironic.

How much money are we talking about? Less than $5000? More? Difficult to
say, between 1000 and 1? Is Krenn donating any amount with every day
a Debian instance is running on their servers? If we think that DDG's
principles are very much like ours, but if we also agree that they can
well use the money they get themselves to further improve their
technology, then maybe we should just ask for the money they can afford
and want to give? Let them make an estimate about how much Debian's
contribution possibly was and happily accept that.

In my opinion we should find ways to help Open Source-supporting
companies like DDG but do not make any compromise with our principles.
Andy maybe they can help us best by employing someone of or close to us?
They can invite upstreams and Debian developers for sprints at their
site about distributed computing, organise bug squashing parties ...
there is so much they can do which helps their standing in the Open
Source community and helps us.

Steffen








--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f72d161@gmx.de

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Philip Hands]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:06:46 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli  wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
> > > to do so, by using the search URL
> > > https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian
> > 
> > The privacy implications of this need to be considered. At least for
> > Chromium there is no indication in the user agent that the user is
> > using Debian.
> 
> Thanks for pointing this out. Let's consider them then.

Should this not be a debconf question, along the lines of popcon, but as
a machine wide:

   Do you mind trading a little privacy to allow us to declare your use
   of Debian to search engines, and thus possibly benefit from revenue
   sharing arising from your searches?

No idea if that should default to yes or no.  It also might be better to
make that less search specific.

We could also have a debconf question for setting the default search
engine across all browsers, which defaults to unset, and is low
priority, so that people can preseed it, but the browser packagers get
to make their own decisions if the value has not been set.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND


pgpqop5OykQC8.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Philip Hands]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:33:37 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli  
wrote:
...
> As part of DDG "open source policy", they want to give us a cut of what
> they make out of our traffic. It's not like Google should be entitled to
> tell us "thou shalt not accept that money".

No, I meant that they might be upset by being dropped from being the
_default_ in favour of DDG -- never mind, I really doubt they care much.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND


pgpBaIikwZwy3.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 07:38:19PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > there and not as an attachment simply because I haven't yet
> > explicitly asked if I can shared it publicly, but I doubt there will
> > be a problem with that.)
> 
> AFAICS, section 5 of its Terms requires that the document be treated
> confidentially.

Yes. But we can ask for a different provision (and have it written
down), if we feel strongly about it.

> Anther interesting thing in there is a requirement that we inform DDG
> thirty days in advance of releasing changes to the implementation of
> the links to it.

It mentions before "product release". We can ask to clarify that will be
interpreted, in the context of Debian, as stable releases. But even in
the most strict interpretation (i.e. an upload), what we risk is that
the agreement will be recessed and we stop receiving the donations.
Money-wise it is not worse than the status quo.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Craig Small]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:26:18AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> - donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
>   that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option in
>   a web browser
Now you have clarified its only this option I'm happy with this setup.
It would be good to have some answers joeyh brings up about
notification.

 - Craig
-- 
Craig Small VK2XLZ   http://enc.com.au/  csmall at : enc.com.au
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org/  csmall at : debian.org
GPG fingerprint: 5D2F B320 B825 D939 04D2  0519 3938 F96B DF50 FEA5


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Joey Hess]

Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> That's basically it, yes. Everything else is essentially ancillary stuff
> like governing law, that either part can break out of it, no warranties,
> how to dispute the traffic report if we want to, etc. The most important
> part of the information is the string we will use to identify Debian
> traffic (see Joey's point). In any case, the draft agreement is
> available in the DPL home on master, under agreements/, as usual. (Only
> there and not as an attachment simply because I haven't yet explicitly
> asked if I can shared it publicly, but I doubt there will be a problem
> with that.)

AFAICS, section 5 of its Terms requires that the document be treated
confidentially.

Anther interesting thing in there is a requirement that we inform DDG
thirty days in advance of releasing changes to the implementation of
the links to it.

-- 
see shy jo


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 12-03-27 at 11:26pm, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:39:43AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > Sorry if it is just me: What is our end of the agreement - apart 
> > from being ok accepting money from them?
> 
> That's basically it, yes. Everything else is essentially ancillary 
> stuff like governing law, that either part can break out of it, no 
> warranties, how to dispute the traffic report if we want to, etc. The 
> most important part of the information is the string we will use to 
> identify Debian traffic (see Joey's point).

To me it is not "basically it" when there's legalese attached.

Do DDG simply encourage us to have our users use a certain ABI, and for 
any of our users that do DDG wants to throw money at us?

Or do we somehow bind ourselves to a contract with DDG?


> In any case, the draft agreement is available in the DPL home on 
> master, under agreements/, as usual. (Only there and not as an 
> attachment simply because I haven't yet explicitly asked if I can 
> shared it publicly, but I doubt there will be a problem with that.)

Either you've set the access rights too tight for that file, or I don't 
understand why you are telling now where it is located.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Mike Hommey]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 11:33:37PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:46:25AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> > On the other hand, I suppose there's some tiny chance that Google will
> > be offended, and reduce sponsorship of DebConf, or be less willing to
> > give us GSoC projects, say.  If we were being mercenary one might want
> > to compare how much money we're likely to get from DDG with the
> > potential loss from Google, but as you say, this should be a technical
> > decision, so if Google get upset about it, that's not really something
> > to be taken into account.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand way they should. We're not *changing* the set
> of search options available in our browsers, DDG has already been
> available in Iceweasel for totally unrelated reasons --- and apparently
> also a default in midori, according to Pierre.
> 
> As part of DDG "open source policy", they want to give us a cut of what
> they make out of our traffic. It's not like Google should be entitled to
> tell us "thou shalt not accept that money". On a principle basis ---
> leaving aside technical concerns --- I don't see this as significantly
> different from accepting a cut of revenue coming from selling t-shirts
> with the Debian name on it.
> 
> The main question here is if we trust ourselves in, once the deal is
> established, not being unconsciously affected by it and favoring DDG
> over others for this reason. If we do *not* do that, than also the point
> of being merchant raised by Steffen is moot; it could be valid only if
> our technical decisions will be affected by it.
> 
> Now, I do see the risk of being unconsciously affected. But balancing
> the odds, I'm still quite convinced that it won't impact us. Even only
> because the chain between the decision makers (the maintainer) and the
> entity who gets the money (the project as a whole) seems long enough.  I
> also think that if a decision of adding DDG as an optional search engine
> will be considered negatively on technical basis, people will complain,
> and we can rely o our usual mechanisms to decide on technical matters.

Considering the known or speculated amounts for deals from various vendors
with Google, considering how many fewer users we have compared to these
vendors, and considering the even fewer number of users using DDG, I
doubt the amount of money we're talking about is going to have any
possible weight, even unconscious.

Mike


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120327215215.ga5...@glandium.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
> > to do so, by using the search URL
> > https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian
> 
> The privacy implications of this need to be considered. At least for
> Chromium there is no indication in the user agent that the user is
> using Debian.

Thanks for pointing this out. Let's consider them then.

If we want to go ahead with this, the only way is tagging Debian
originated searches as such, because it is by counting them that DDG
will decide the amount of the "donation".

There are around already quite some statistics on the net that counts
the traffic that originates "from various distributions". A well known
example are the Wikimedia statistics [1]. They claim to do that on the
basis of the User-Agent string, so their definition of "Linux Debian" is
probably equivalent to "Iceweasel".

[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm

Using "&t=iceweasel" is actually what the DDG person who approached us
initially proposed. It is me and Mike who suggested to rather go for
"&t=debian". The reason is that the value of the "&t" parameter is to be
written down in the agreement. Choosing "&t=debian" would allow other
browser to pick the same query string --- again, if the respective
maintainers want to --- without having to change the agreement.

The choice of whether searches are recognizable as coming from Debian or
not is in maintainer's hands, as it already is, independently of whether
we accept DDG "donations" or not.

Personally, I expect browser maintainers to have already arguments to
decide whether they want traffic to be recognizable as originating from
Debian or not. All we'll be saying is that, for maintainers who don't
have a problem with earmarking traffic as originating from Debian, *they
will have an option* to gather Debian "donations" out of DDG searches.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 02:21:22PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> So it is important that any agreement we enter into does not commit us
> to retaining any particular search engine, nor commit us to retaining
> it as the default.  We should be free at any time to change the
> configuration we ship.

Agreed. Yet another argument for the 25% option (which, again, was the
only one I meant to discuss). But you make a good point that, even if
we'll end up having DDG as the default on all our browsers, we should
remain on the 25% option, to avoid getting too "tied up" with
agreements. I completely agree.

> To avoid bias, I would suggest that we avoid mentioning the exact
> amounts of money we gain in contexts where it might influence, even
> subconsciously, our technical choices.  

This is at stake with the good principle that our finances should be
public, though. (And I think the finance transparency principle should
win, on this.)

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:46:25AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> On the other hand, I suppose there's some tiny chance that Google will
> be offended, and reduce sponsorship of DebConf, or be less willing to
> give us GSoC projects, say.  If we were being mercenary one might want
> to compare how much money we're likely to get from DDG with the
> potential loss from Google, but as you say, this should be a technical
> decision, so if Google get upset about it, that's not really something
> to be taken into account.

I'm not sure I understand way they should. We're not *changing* the set
of search options available in our browsers, DDG has already been
available in Iceweasel for totally unrelated reasons --- and apparently
also a default in midori, according to Pierre.

As part of DDG "open source policy", they want to give us a cut of what
they make out of our traffic. It's not like Google should be entitled to
tell us "thou shalt not accept that money". On a principle basis ---
leaving aside technical concerns --- I don't see this as significantly
different from accepting a cut of revenue coming from selling t-shirts
with the Debian name on it.

The main question here is if we trust ourselves in, once the deal is
established, not being unconsciously affected by it and favoring DDG
over others for this reason. If we do *not* do that, than also the point
of being merchant raised by Steffen is moot; it could be valid only if
our technical decisions will be affected by it.

Now, I do see the risk of being unconsciously affected. But balancing
the odds, I'm still quite convinced that it won't impact us. Even only
because the chain between the decision makers (the maintainer) and the
entity who gets the money (the project as a whole) seems long enough.  I
also think that if a decision of adding DDG as an optional search engine
will be considered negatively on technical basis, people will complain,
and we can rely o our usual mechanisms to decide on technical matters.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences ..  http://upsilon.cc/zack ..  . . o
Debian Project Leader ...  @zack on identi.ca ...  o o o « the
first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:39:43AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> Sorry if it is just me: What is our end of the agreement - apart from 
> being ok accepting money from them?

That's basically it, yes. Everything else is essentially ancillary stuff
like governing law, that either part can break out of it, no warranties,
how to dispute the traffic report if we want to, etc. The most important
part of the information is the string we will use to identify Debian
traffic (see Joey's point). In any case, the draft agreement is
available in the DPL home on master, under agreements/, as usual. (Only
there and not as an attachment simply because I haven't yet explicitly
asked if I can shared it publicly, but I doubt there will be a problem
with that.)

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Yves-Alexis Perez]

On mar., 2012-03-27 at 15:56 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> The second option (i.e. the 50% cut) is *not* currently on the table,
> simply because DDG is not the default search engine in web browsers
> shipped by Debian at present. What I'm proposing is to accept the 25%
> cut that will originate from browsers we ship that have DDG as a
> search
> engine option. 

I'm not sure if that counts, but midori uses DDG by default (and
upstream gets some revenue from it).

Regards,
-- 
Yves-Alexis


signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Peter Samuelson]

[Stefano Zacchiroli]
> What they propose is:
> 
> - donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
>   that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option
>   in a web browser
> 
> - donating to Debian 50% of the same income if DDG is the default
>   search engine

I suggest that we explicitly refuse the second option, so that we
cannot let money influence any browser maintainer's choice of default,
either in appearance or in reality.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120327175821.ga2...@p12n.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Joey Hess]

Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> I've clarified to them that the choice of which search engine options
> are available in web browsers we ship, as well as the choice of which
> one is the default, are purely based on technical merit and won't be
> affected by us entering in such an agreement (if we do). As a matter of
> fact, DDG has been already available as a search option in Iceweasel
> since quite a while; not sure about other browsers in Debian.

Chromium allows the user to choose between three search engines the
first time it's run. There's no preference given for any particular
engine. DDG used to be one of the choices, IIRC, but now it's Google,
Yahoo, Bing. I don't know why that changed.

> DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
> to do so, by using the search URL
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian

The privacy implications of this need to be considered. At least for
Chromium there is no indication in the user agent that the user is
using Debian.

-- 
see shy jo


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Joey Hess]

Steffen Möller wrote:
> The problem I see is with a
> competition with upstream. If we  in any way lower the impact firefox
> has for google, then this has a direct effect not only on firefox but
> also on our relation with them and other upstreams.

That is what I came here to say. It needs to be considered carefully.

-- 
see shy jo


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 03:39:27PM +0200, Luca BRUNO wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli scrisse:
> 
> > What they propose is:
> > 
> > - donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
> >   that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option
> > in a web browser
> > 
> > - donating to Debian 50% of the same income if DDG is the default
> > search engine
> 
> From a personal POV I'd prefer the first option, as:

I apologize for not having made it clear enough in my first message.

The second option (i.e. the 50% cut) is *not* currently on the table,
simply because DDG is not the default search engine in web browsers
shipped by Debian at present. What I'm proposing is to accept the 25%
cut that will originate from browsers we ship that have DDG as a search
engine option.

When (and if) DDG will become the default search engine in browsers
shipped by bu, we can think about the second option. But that is simply
not the case at present.

Cheers

PS I'll get back to other points in this thread later on, but I wanted
   to clarify this point in the meantime
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Ian Jackson]

Mike Hommey writes ("Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo"):
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:46:25AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> > Of course establishing whether that's the case is not likely to be
> > possible, but I suppose the iceweasel maintainer could canvas opinions,
> > or just make a decision as they see fit (in the usual manner).
> 
> With my iceweasel maintainer hat on, I won't start to consider ddg as a
> default until it at least matches the user experience the current
> default engine provides, including search suggestions and localized
> results (the latter requires some manual work ; the former lacks
> server-side support).

This is the right approach to making the decision.

I would like to put in a word though for the idea that privacy
considerations, and quality of search results (in all senses including
general relevance, spamminess, and "bubbliness") should be part of the
evaluation you make.

But I would like to decouple the two discussions.  I think it's wrong
to have the conversation "what should the default search engine be"
mixed up with "should we take money from search engines".

Ian.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20337.49053.694731.645...@chiark.greenend.org.uk

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Luca BRUNO]

Stefano Zacchiroli scrisse:

> What they propose is:
> 
> - donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
>   that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option
> in a web browser
> 
> - donating to Debian 50% of the same income if DDG is the default
> search engine

From a personal POV I'd prefer the first option, as:
* most of our browsers already ship a customized search-engine list,
  so tailoring DDG url here won't really be invasive
* there is no default-conf/revenue tradeoff (as I strongly see it in the
  second case)
* each maintainer still keeps the final word on the configuration (ie.
  if a no-customization/minimal-diff-to-upstream policy is in use).

Given the above reasons, first proposal looks more aligned with our
philosophy and guidelines.

Ciao, Luca

-- 
 .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux **  | Luca Bruno (kaeso)
: :'  :   The Universal O.S.| lucab (AT) debian.org
`. `'`  | GPG Key ID: 3BFB9FB3
  `- http://www.debian.org  | Debian GNU/Linux Developer


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Ian Jackson]

Stefano Zacchiroli writes ("revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo"):
> The above are the facts. Based on them I'll need to take a decision of
> whether we accept their proposal or not. At present, I'm very much
> inclined to accept, for various reasons:

Yes.

> - The main risk I see in similar agreements is influencing our technical
>   choices by the revenues. By making clear --- to them and to us ---
>   that maintainers should be free to make technical decisions no matter
>   the agreements, I'm relatively confident this risk is moot.
>   Ultimately, trust our package maintainers not to care much about
>   agreements and keep on doing their thing.

I entirely agree.

You write:
> I've clarified to them that the choice of which search engine options
> are available in web browsers we ship, as well as the choice of which
> one is the default, are purely based on technical merit and won't be
> affected by us entering in such an agreement (if we do). As a matter
> of fact, DDG has been already available as a search option in
> Iceweasel since quite a while; not sure about other browsers in
> Debian.

So it is important that any agreement we enter into does not commit us
to retaining any particular search engine, nor commit us to retaining
it as the default.  We should be free at any time to change the
configuration we ship.

To avoid bias, I would suggest that we avoid mentioning the exact
amounts of money we gain in contexts where it might influence, even
subconsciously, our technical choices.  

Personally if I were Mike Hommey I would want to try to avoid finding
out the total sum, and would ask people to respect that choice, but
that's up to Mike I think.

Ian.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/20337.48850.902922.588...@chiark.greenend.org.uk

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[green]

Philip Hands wrote at 2012-03-27 04:46 -0500:
> On the other hand, I suppose there's some tiny chance that Google will
> be offended, and reduce sponsorship of DebConf, or be less willing to
> give us GSoC projects, say.  If we were being mercenary one might want
> to compare how much money we're likely to get from DDG with the
> potential loss from Google, but as you say, this should be a technical
> decision, so if Google get upset about it, that's not really something
> to be taken into account.

This might be a good reason to go with the 25% option, making DuckDuckGo an 
option but not the default.

Or a user could be required to choose the default search engine when creating 
a new profile.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Mike Hommey]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 12:16:52PM +0200, Steffen Möller wrote:
> On 03/27/2012 10:39 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> > On 12-03-27 at 10:26am, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> >> Dear Project Members,
> >>   thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
> >> I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
> >> engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
> >> Project.
> >>
> >> [1] https://duckduckgo.com/
> [..]
> >> I welcome feedback on this matter,
> > Sorry if it is just me: What is our end of the agreement - apart from 
> > being ok accepting money from them?
> >
> > Thanks for your work on this,
> For the sake of consistency Iit may be preferable to work towards having
> them listed as a partner and they just donate and announce whatever they
> want to donate.
> 
> But I truly wish we'd have several of such sites through which Debian
> gets some money. This could be the typical online bookshop or anything
> else like me getting tires for my car. The problem I see is with a
> competition with upstream. If we  in any way lower the impact firefox
> has for google, then this has a direct effect not only on firefox but
> also on our relation with them and other upstreams.

Ubuntu has a much bigger impact, and that didn't prevent them to do that:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2010-January/030065.html

Mike


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2012032738.ga7...@glandium.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Mike Hommey]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 10:46:25AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:26:18 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli  
> wrote:
> ...
> > I welcome feedback on this matter,
> 
> I already install DDG as default search engine on any (Linux or Windows)
> user that lets me fiddle with their setup, so as far as I'm concerned
> this is a case of us being paid to do something that will save me effort.
> 
> I realise that's an almost completely irrelevant data point, but if it
> were the case that other DDs are doing similar, then we should probably
> be changing the default regardless of this payment offer.
> 
> Of course establishing whether that's the case is not likely to be
> possible, but I suppose the iceweasel maintainer could canvas opinions,
> or just make a decision as they see fit (in the usual manner).

With my iceweasel maintainer hat on, I won't start to consider ddg as a
default until it at least matches the user experience the current
default engine provides, including search suggestions and localized
results (the latter requires some manual work ; the former lacks
server-side support).

Mike


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120327111414.gb7...@glandium.org

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Steffen Möller]

On 03/27/2012 10:39 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> On 12-03-27 at 10:26am, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>> Dear Project Members,
>>   thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
>> I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
>> engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
>> Project.
>>
>> [1] https://duckduckgo.com/
[..]
>> I welcome feedback on this matter,
> Sorry if it is just me: What is our end of the agreement - apart from 
> being ok accepting money from them?
>
> Thanks for your work on this,
For the sake of consistency Iit may be preferable to work towards having
them listed as a partner and they just donate and announce whatever they
want to donate.

But I truly wish we'd have several of such sites through which Debian
gets some money. This could be the typical online bookshop or anything
else like me getting tires for my car. The problem I see is with a
competition with upstream. If we  in any way lower the impact firefox
has for google, then this has a direct effect not only on firefox but
also on our relation with them and other upstreams.

At the moment we are perceived as enthusiasts serving upstream
developers with the best possible presentation of their work.  Once we
start getting money through their tools, they may possibly start
thinking differently. This is not necessarily a bad change of thought,
but it is different. Thinking it all further, should we for instance
have some user-configurable optional android-like ads shown in
applications? This would be simple to code and Debian could earn a lot
with this. We would not want that, right? Would we? Or do we have the
obligation to come up with an option for something more commercial to
feed not us but the upstream developers?

Best,

Steffen




--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f719394.4000...@gmx.de

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Philip Hands]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:26:18 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli  
wrote:
...
> I welcome feedback on this matter,

I already install DDG as default search engine on any (Linux or Windows)
user that lets me fiddle with their setup, so as far as I'm concerned
this is a case of us being paid to do something that will save me effort.

I realise that's an almost completely irrelevant data point, but if it
were the case that other DDs are doing similar, then we should probably
be changing the default regardless of this payment offer.

Of course establishing whether that's the case is not likely to be
possible, but I suppose the iceweasel maintainer could canvas opinions,
or just make a decision as they see fit (in the usual manner).

Having a small, Free Software friendly search engine as the default also
makes sense on the basis that it would help remind people that these
things can be customised.

On the other hand, I suppose there's some tiny chance that Google will
be offended, and reduce sponsorship of DebConf, or be less willing to
give us GSoC projects, say.  If we were being mercenary one might want
to compare how much money we're likely to get from DDG with the
potential loss from Google, but as you say, this should be a technical
decision, so if Google get upset about it, that's not really something
to be taken into account.

If we go for this, what are the chances of getting DDG to sponsor
DebConf as well in addition to the offered profit share?  ;-)

Cheers. Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND


pgpZMTihcnHfG.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[dE .]

On 03/27/12 13:56, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:

Dear Project Members,
   thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
Project.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/

What they propose is:

- donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
   that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option in
   a web browser

- donating to Debian 50% of the same income if DDG is the default search
   engine

I've clarified to them that the choice of which search engine options
are available in web browsers we ship, as well as the choice of which
one is the default, are purely based on technical merit and won't be
affected by us entering in such an agreement (if we do). As a matter of
fact, DDG has been already available as a search option in Iceweasel
since quite a while; not sure about other browsers in Debian.

DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
to do so, by using the search URL
https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian . Mike, with his
maintainer hat on, is fine with using such a search string in
Iceweasel. Other browsers, if the respective maintainers want to, might
end up doing the same.

The folks at DuckDuckGo periodically publish traffic reports [2] and ask
projects that enter in revenue sharing agreements with them to
periodically invoice DDG to collect their shares of revenues. The
company claims policies of regular donations to FOSS projects [3] and of
privacy consciousness [4]. Other FOSS distributions have already entered
in similar agreements with them (e.g. LinuxMint [5]).

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html
[3] 
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/duckduckgo-foss-donations-2011.html
[4] https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html
[5] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884

The above are the facts. Based on them I'll need to take a decision of
whether we accept their proposal or not. At present, I'm very much
inclined to accept, for various reasons:

- Like it or not, DDG makes money out of web traffic that originates
   from Debian and they can already distinguish it from other traffic in
   many ways. If they want to share part of it with Debian, due to their
   policy of donating to FOSS projects, that's fine with me. We can put
   into good use the money for the Debian Project (stay tuned on this
   front, because guaranteeing sustainability of the ambitious plans by
   DSA [6] will require some fund-raising efforts).

   [6] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00032.html

- The main risk I see in similar agreements is influencing our technical
   choices by the revenues. By making clear --- to them and to us ---
   that maintainers should be free to make technical decisions no matter
   the agreements, I'm relatively confident this risk is moot.
   Ultimately, trust our package maintainers not to care much about
   agreements and keep on doing their thing.

I welcome feedback on this matter,
Cheers.


Sounds like a good idea to me. FF does the same.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f713c85.10...@gmail.com

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 12-03-27 at 10:26am, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Dear Project Members,
>   thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
> I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
> engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
> Project.
> 
> [1] https://duckduckgo.com/
> 
> What they propose is:
> 
> - donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
>   that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option in
>   a web browser
> 
> - donating to Debian 50% of the same income if DDG is the default search
>   engine
> 
> I've clarified to them that the choice of which search engine options
> are available in web browsers we ship, as well as the choice of which
> one is the default, are purely based on technical merit and won't be
> affected by us entering in such an agreement (if we do). As a matter of
> fact, DDG has been already available as a search option in Iceweasel
> since quite a while; not sure about other browsers in Debian.
> 
> DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
> to do so, by using the search URL
> https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian . Mike, with his
> maintainer hat on, is fine with using such a search string in
> Iceweasel. Other browsers, if the respective maintainers want to, might
> end up doing the same.
> 
> The folks at DuckDuckGo periodically publish traffic reports [2] and ask
> projects that enter in revenue sharing agreements with them to
> periodically invoice DDG to collect their shares of revenues. The
> company claims policies of regular donations to FOSS projects [3] and of
> privacy consciousness [4]. Other FOSS distributions have already entered
> in similar agreements with them (e.g. LinuxMint [5]).
> 
> [2] https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html
> [3] 
> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/duckduckgo-foss-donations-2011.html
> [4] https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html
> [5] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884
> 
> The above are the facts. Based on them I'll need to take a decision of
> whether we accept their proposal or not. At present, I'm very much
> inclined to accept, for various reasons:
> 
> - Like it or not, DDG makes money out of web traffic that originates
>   from Debian and they can already distinguish it from other traffic in
>   many ways. If they want to share part of it with Debian, due to their
>   policy of donating to FOSS projects, that's fine with me. We can put
>   into good use the money for the Debian Project (stay tuned on this
>   front, because guaranteeing sustainability of the ambitious plans by
>   DSA [6] will require some fund-raising efforts).
> 
>   [6] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00032.html
> 
> - The main risk I see in similar agreements is influencing our technical
>   choices by the revenues. By making clear --- to them and to us ---
>   that maintainers should be free to make technical decisions no matter
>   the agreements, I'm relatively confident this risk is moot.
>   Ultimately, trust our package maintainers not to care much about
>   agreements and keep on doing their thing.
> 
> I welcome feedback on this matter,

Sorry if it is just me: What is our end of the agreement - apart from 
being ok accepting money from them?

Thanks for your work on this,

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

Dear Project Members,
  thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
Project.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/

What they propose is:

- donating to Debian 25% of the income they make from inbound traffic
  that originates from Debian users if DDG is a search engine option in
  a web browser

- donating to Debian 50% of the same income if DDG is the default search
  engine

I've clarified to them that the choice of which search engine options
are available in web browsers we ship, as well as the choice of which
one is the default, are purely based on technical merit and won't be
affected by us entering in such an agreement (if we do). As a matter of
fact, DDG has been already available as a search option in Iceweasel
since quite a while; not sure about other browsers in Debian.

DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
to do so, by using the search URL
https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}&t=debian . Mike, with his
maintainer hat on, is fine with using such a search string in
Iceweasel. Other browsers, if the respective maintainers want to, might
end up doing the same.

The folks at DuckDuckGo periodically publish traffic reports [2] and ask
projects that enter in revenue sharing agreements with them to
periodically invoice DDG to collect their shares of revenues. The
company claims policies of regular donations to FOSS projects [3] and of
privacy consciousness [4]. Other FOSS distributions have already entered
in similar agreements with them (e.g. LinuxMint [5]).

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html
[3] 
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/03/duckduckgo-foss-donations-2011.html
[4] https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html
[5] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1884

The above are the facts. Based on them I'll need to take a decision of
whether we accept their proposal or not. At present, I'm very much
inclined to accept, for various reasons:

- Like it or not, DDG makes money out of web traffic that originates
  from Debian and they can already distinguish it from other traffic in
  many ways. If they want to share part of it with Debian, due to their
  policy of donating to FOSS projects, that's fine with me. We can put
  into good use the money for the Debian Project (stay tuned on this
  front, because guaranteeing sustainability of the ambitious plans by
  DSA [6] will require some fund-raising efforts).

  [6] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00032.html

- The main risk I see in similar agreements is influencing our technical
  choices by the revenues. By making clear --- to them and to us ---
  that maintainers should be free to make technical decisions no matter
  the agreements, I'm relatively confident this risk is moot.
  Ultimately, trust our package maintainers not to care much about
  agreements and keep on doing their thing.

I welcome feedback on this matter,
Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature