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Comment by jacurtis | Hacker News Reader

> "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies."

The part I find the most enlightening (ie: disturbing) is that Canonical's only regret is that the sales rep used "a poor choice of word" and they will train their salespeople better.

I assume the "poor choice of word" was when the salesman said, "I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu instance". Was Canonical's biggest regret that the salesmen INFORMED the user that they are monitoring installs and linking them to contact information?

Canonical never said "oh the salesperson wasn't supposed to market to you with this information", instead they basically said, the salesman wasn't supposed to TELL YOU that we are monitoring what you install and linking it to personal contact details.

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> the salesman wasn't supposed to TELL YOU that we are monitoring what you install

Exactly. The old "I'm sorry I got caught" and not "I'm sorry I did it."

We can do better™

Legal wishes to remind you that that statement always needs this accompanying statement.

The word "better" does not imply a commitment towards customers and/or investors. *The word "do" should not be seen as referring to the taking of any specific course of action which may or may not yield tangible change. *The word "can" does not signify a concrete ability and is not forward-looking. *The word "We" should not be interpreted as Canonical Ltd. nor any of its subsidiaries or affiliated entities.

Reminds of the famous Bill Clinton qoute

>It Depends on what the meaning of the word is is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0

Except he had a perfectly legitimate point there, as far as I understand, he just utterly botched the explanation.

There's a big difference between "is" and "was". Which is what he should have said. There were no semantic games in that particular statement, in stark contrast to some of the other things he said.

I'm sorry, but I am not completely aware of the broader context and just shared that soundbite as meme.

It's fine and understandable, it's just weird how the meme version is so detached from what the actual problems were.

For the record, while in the midst of discovering a possible breach of contract with a company the size of Microsoft, it would be very good form, from a legal perspective, not to risk further jeopardy by openly saying that you've breached your contract. While lawyers are often distasteful to HN readers, they do have immense value in these situations, and they are completely correct to say "do not admit error at this time, not until we've formally analyzed it, post-mortemed it, and resolved our contractual obligations to Microsoft". Yes, y'all may want them to self-flagellate, but I'd rather see them honor their contracts and respect their lawyers first. They already admitted that they behaved inappropriately. The rest is just icing on the cake.

I like how the vocabulary you use imply there is something highly nefarious happening here whereas it is all fairly standard direct marketing based on an exchange of data clearly highlighted in the TOS.

I don't really understand why everyone is up in arms here. In this case, Microsoft is basically a reseller. They told Canonical that they sold one of their product to a customer and Canonical reached out on LinkedIn, a professional social network. It all seems fair game to me. This is not some creepy internet tracking using dubious way to segment people. This is basic direct marketing in a B2B context.

It's all pretty tame.

>"This is basic direct marketing in a B2B context. It's all pretty tame."

Well maybe it is ok from that perspective. However my personal reaction as a customer to such sales approach would simple be something in line of GFY to that salesperson.

Unless you're the kind of person that actually sits and reads the EULA prior to hitting OK every single time, I'd say it makes complete sense people are up in arms. There is a difference between legally defensible and reasonable expectations.

It is actually completely unacceptable on what is advertised as a secure platform to engage in targeted marketing AT ALL. If any information about what my company is doing on your platform is shared to other companies, then you are not secure by any definition of the word that I'm aware of. It is not for you to judge what information is valuable or damaging for us.

> It is actually completely unacceptable on what is advertised as a secure platform to engage in targeted marketing AT ALL. If any information about what my company is doing on your platform is shared to other companies, then you are not secure by any definition of the word that I'm aware of. It is not for you to judge what information is valuable or damaging for us.

Security and data sharing have nothing in common. It is perfectly acceptable to share customers list when you are resellers if you clearly state you will do so in the contract. It doesn't become true because you write it in all cap and say it is not for me to judge. If you so value your company information, maybe you should start reading what you sign.

Once again, we are not talking about an unreadable EULA for personal software. Azure is a platform geared towards professional. Nothing creepy is happening here. That's Canonical reaching out and giving a potential customer a point of contact if they ever need support. This has nothing to do with broad data collection and spying and is perfectly reasonable. I don't understand why some commenters here find the idea of talking with an actual human being so traumatic.

Not who you are replying to, but I'd imagine your point:

> If you so value your company information, maybe you should start reading what you sign.

Is exactly what people are up in arms about. Even reading the EULA, you may not expect Microsoft to permit data sharing in this way. And if this is entirely unacceptable for you, then it's time to leave Microsoft.

Or you can make noise about it online like this, and cause Microsoft to realise this sharing will lose them customers. I doubt the data is worth the churn, and Microsoft will likely change the policy rather than lose the customers.

Yeah, the only acceptable choice of words in this case would be: none.

>Canonical never said "oh the salesperson wasn't supposed to market to you with this information"

Canonical never said "oh the salesperson shouldn't have had this information".

There's only one way they could have used it.

It's all about plausible deniability.

Or as law enforcement call it: parallel construction.

The sales rep was probably expected to reach out claiming some other reason, making it look like the standard LinkedIn spam, but in reality much more targeted.

Yep, and the purported “retraining” will probably be more like, “use a vaguer or falser pretense to cold-call”.

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