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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

Not if you purchase something from Canonical on MS's Marketplace. That's what marketplaces do.

They shouldn't. The examples of cases where it's not the norm are spread throughout the comments.

I'd say a reasonable person would not expect to do business with Azure and have all of their information forwarded off to Canonical.

It's a scummy arrangement and execution on both sides.

What was purchased from Canonical?

A free copy of Ubuntu, packaged specifically for use on Azure.

That's not a purchase. Every dictionary I've read has described a purchase to include transferring money and ownership.

Starting a VM isn't a purchase of Ubuntu. It's a rental of compute, storage, and network resources. Any other definition is, quite simply, wrong.

> Any other definition is, quite simply, wrong.

Then there are a great many definitions of there that are quite wrong. Many references to organising a service and so forth.

This is probably one of those instances where the dictionary needs to catch up. A dictionary documents how language is used at the time of its compilation, it does not dictate how language will/should be used for all time forward.

organising -> purchasing

(is it just my terrible coordination with this slide keyboard and lack of attention to see errors as they happen, or is android's auto carrot getting less & less reliable?)

You need a better dictionary, or to stop making things up. The Oxford Dictionary, for example, defines purchase as merely "acquiring something".

Legally, freedom of contract means the specifics of what is to be exchanged in a purchase are more or less unlimited.

Even colloquially, many purchases happen without "money" changing hands. Paying with a voucher, for example, would seem to be a form of payment that doesn’t involve actual money.

> You need a better dictionary

Indeed, perhaps.

> or to stop making things up.

I didn't make it up but thanks for the insinuation.

> The Oxford Dictionary

I haven't spent $90 on the Oxford Dictionary because I haven't believed it to be necessary.

> defines purchase as merely "acquiring something".

Really? Tell that to Google which claims its definition comes from "Oxford Languages" [0]. I'm sure that's not quite the Oxford English Dictionary though.

Google states:

    1. acquire (something) by paying for it; buy.
    2. haul in (a rope or cable) or haul up (an anchor) by means of a pulley, lever, etc.

But that's just Google and we all know Google can be manipulated. Let's take the free definition from Merriam-Webster instead [1].

    1 a : to obtain by paying money or its equivalent

Okay how about a third source? Dictionary.com [2] states:

    to acquire by the payment of money or its equivalent; buy.

Finally, Cambridge at the fourth source, is where a monetary transaction isn't directly part of the definition but it certainly is part of the supporting descriptions.

    verb: to buy something
    * She purchased her first house with the money.
    
    noun: something that you buy
    * How do you wish to pay for your purchases?

So they're all free dictionaries so they're not as elite as the Oxford English Dictionary. But their definitions are fairly consistent. And, given that I think that a purchase without money is actually a barter then perhaps the Oxford English Dictionary isn't as good of a source.

You might want to learn about the definition of a rent by the way. It's a bit closer to what goes on with cloud instances.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=define+purchase

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purchase

[2] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/purchase

[3] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/purch...

It's essentially a subscription, sometimes for a price, sometimes not. And it's more than just a Ubuntu distro, it's an Azure image that also contains code allowing the distro to run in Azure's system. Much like an AMI at Amazon.

Anyone can bypass the marketplace by creating their own machine images, it's not too difficult.

You're not really wrong, but I understand that on Azure it's explicitly framed as a marketplace where you can purchase software to run on the computers you're renting. Much of that software, however, has no monetary cost. It's simply a quick and easy way to get the correct software from the correct vendor without going through the effort of preparing the disk images yourself.

An instance of Ubuntu from a pre-prepared image, in exchange for $0.00 and your contact details.

The pre-prepared image part does perpetually have value - it saves you installing from a standard ISO and Azure-ifying the result, or having your own image pre-prepared from earlier.

It is a short while since I last spun up a fresh VM in Azure so I'm can't remember if this arrangement is made clear at all, though I do remember getting an email like the one discussed at least once last year.

If this is so common (or valuable), why am I not charged for an image of Ubuntu optimized for Docker when I pull it from Docker hub?

Or when I download the various usage-optimized ISOs from Canonical's own site?

This is exceptional, and in exceptionally poor taste.

This is exactly how Docker works too - they recently rate limited anonymous accounts, and by signing up for the free plan you agree to very similar terms and conditions in return for a higher pull rate limit.

Source: https://www.docker.com/legal/docker-privacy-policy

See Section 3. Use of Information Collected

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