We who present free software as a defense against malware do not say it is a
perfect defense. No perfect defense is known. We don't say the community will
deter malware without fail. Thus, strictly speaking, the Ubuntu spyware
example doesn't mean we have to eat our words.
But there's more at stake here than whether some of us have to eat some
words. What's at stake is whether our community can effectively use the
argument based on proprietary spyware. If we can only say, “free software
won't spy on you, unless it's Ubuntu,” that's much less powerful than
saying, “free software won't spy on you.”
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html
