Richard M. Stallman, aka RMS, creator of the Gnu Public License (GPL) and the Free Software Foundation has announced that as far as he’s concerned, Ubuntu contains spyware and that Linux supporters should shun Ubuntu for spying.

Specifically, RMS hates that Ubuntu 12.10 incorporated Amazon search into its default search function. So, if you searched for say “Hobbit.” you’d get results from both your PC and Amazon. When it was introduced, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, defended this change by saying Ubuntu wasn’t going to incorporate ads into the operating system, which Microsoft has done with Windows 8, and that no personalized data would be sent to Amazon.

Slideshow: Say hello to Ubuntu 12.10 Linux

Later, Ubuntu make Amazon search an optional feature, while leaving it on by default. That’s not good enough for RMS.

Free software father declared Ubuntu Linux to contain spyware. More >