Re: Announcing GaaS (GNOME as a Service)

[Ekaterina Gerasimova <kittykat3756 gmail com>]

Hi,

On 1 April 2018 at 11:40, Alexandre Franke <afranke gnome org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We’ve heard complaints about GNOME being bloated.
> We’ve taken them into consideration and that’s why today we’re
> announcing a new offering from GNOME - GaaS.
> Some had already gotten wind of it, but today we’re making it official.
>
> It has never been easier to use GNOME on any computer.
> All you need to do to connect to the service is to go to your GNOME
> Settings, add an Online Account, and you’re all set.
> From then on GaaS will appear in your GNOME Boxes.
>
> We will offer this service free of charge.
> That’s right, you won’t have to add any credit card details and worry
> about topping up your account to keep using it.
> We know that money is a gas (ha ha, this is our only bad joke in this
> article, we promise) and more importantly that not everyone can afford
> to pay for online services.
> This breakthrough should be accessible to everyone and that’s why we
> decided not to take your money.
>
> Now that we have GaaS, we will be able to collect user metrics,
> through a unique partnership with Cambridge Analytica.

How exactly are Cambridge Analytica involved? Is it a company that
GNOME wants to be associated with given the currently ongoing
discussions around them?

> Thanks to our new *Meth*od to *An*alyze the *E*xperience (METHANE), we
> can leverage this data to run a giant user survey and improve our user
> experience, addressing concerns our benevolent critics have so kindly
> expressed on various sites on the internet.
>
> We care a lot about your privacy and that’s why GaaS is powered by
> GNOME’s own targetted advertising products, utilising a unique
> blockchain. Think Bitcoin, but for adverts!

Where could users find the privacy T&Cs for the service?

> Indeed all outgoing traffic from our service to the other bits of the
> Internet you’ll connect to won’t leave a trace, to anyone except GNOME
> and our selected media partners.

Who are the selected media partners? Who at GNOME will have access to
the collected information? What will be done to communicate the
expectation to privacy to those people? When I was on the board, I had
looked into getting the GNOME sysadmins who have access to user data
to sign NDAs, but some were not keen on the idea. Would something like
this be enforced for those who have access to the collected data?

> What else does it have under the belly?
> Built upon the latest in technology, it uses ostree and flatpak to
> provide you with the latest versions of our software.
>
> GaaS will be released later this month.
> In the meantime, we hope this mind blowing news won’t cause a brain fart.
>
> Have a nice day,
>
> --
> Alexandre Franke
> GNOME Hacker & Foundation Director
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