Jono Bacon

> Does anyone know of any other incidents that make case against centralized servers?

Yes. Many of these are undemocratic, but others are merely unintentional problems of reliability induced by a single point of failure.

http://www.delicious.com/kragen/decentralization-stories has a few dozen items up through 2008.

http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395310.html
livejournal users want more control of livejournal. decentralization-stories

omg decentralization-stories:
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/when-google-owns-you/
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/google-gets-back-to-nick/

http://valleywag.com/5053704/kentucky-judge-moves-to-seize-gambling-sites-domains
more decentralization-stories: caribbeangold.com, etc., censored

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341378
more decentralization-stories: legal intimidation takes a site offline

http://blog.wikiring.com/Blog/BlogEntry28
decentralization-stories: the TWiki Takeover

http://norayounis.com/2008/11/04/308
The impressive flickr account of blogger and friend Hossam el-Hamalawy
is facing censorship by flickr themselves! First they disabled
pro-palestine photos he had taken in Ireland, then they started
searching their old drawers for reasons to un-list his account from
public search.
decentralization-stories

http://arabist.net/arabawy/2008/11/04/flick-censors-my-account/
more details. ugly. decentralization-stories

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/11/05/support-the-arabist/
global voices picks it…

This is actually a response to some Ubuntu contributors very publicly leaving the project, and not to criticism from users. This is the blog post that started it off:

http://doctormo.org/2013/03/06/ubuntu-membership-2/

And here some the many responses in the past two days (remember, these are Ubuntu members, not random users), many of them agree that there's something wrong with the Ubuntu community of contributors:

http://randall.executiv.es/ubuntu-stage-next

http://blog.pault.ag/post/44821301540/ubuntu-the-community

http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/03/08/thoughts-on-recent-community-concerns/

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1235

http://apachelog.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/divisive-leadership/

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1232

http://smartboyhw.tk/wordpress_smartboyhw/?p=28

http://linuxgrandma.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/thoughts-and-worries-about-proposed-new.html

http://philipballew.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/confessions-of-a-community-member/

http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=7670

http://ftbeowulf.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/freedom-and-community/

Actual link rather than to Slashdot discussion:

http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/12/07/on-richard-stallman-and-ubuntu/

The problem for me is that isn't addressed by this is the decision to make it default on in Ubuntu. That failure of judgement* means that I can't trust them not to change something else that I have to notice and find out how to easily disable. Easy to turn off is not good enough for such a feature.

Edit to add: Basically I think RMS is right about this one (as he often is) although in many cases I make compromises that he would find wholly unacceptable.

* It might be ethics but I would give Canonical the benefit of the doubt on that one.

The title of this article doesn't conform with the facts. According to Jono Bacon[1]:

"There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives."

[1] http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-unity/

I think this clarifies things:
"There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives"
From: http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-unity/

I just want to point out that the link is for user submitted design suggestions and is not necessarily official Canonical plan of record for what will ship.

http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/23/community-driven-ubuntu-phone-core-apps/

It's a subtle distinction I wanted to point out.

Not speaking on behalf of Canonical, just in my own capacity.