TLDR: Ubuntu Pro offers additional security patches to packages found in the universe repo. Universe is community maintained so Ubuntu is essentially stepping in to provide critical CVE patches to some popular software in this repo that the community has not addressed.
I suppose it depends on how you look at it but I don’t really see this as withholding patches. Software in this repo would otherwise be missing these patches and it’s a ton of work for Ubuntu to provide these patches themselves.
Now is they move glibc to universe and tell me to subscribe to get updates I’ll feel differently.
Yeah, I think Canonical is full of crap, but in this context, what they’re doing is justified.
This article is clickbait.
How does this compare to other distros?
Debian includes ffmpeg, for example, in the main stable repo. Given Debian’s reputation, I would think they are including these security patches in a timely manner, though I’m not entirely sure how to compare specific patches to verify this.
Of course, everything changes when you are selling support contracts. Canonical and Red Hat are the big two for enterprise because they provide support.
When I was last running Ubuntu on desktop, I signed up for an account and enabled these extra security updates. Yeah, it’s “free”, but it requires jumping through hoops. Requiring an account to get patches is the kind of user-hostile design pattern I expect from Apple or Google, but not in the desktop Linux world.
Ubuntu and Debian are essentially the same here.
Debian’s contrib repo, which is the equivalent of Ubuntu’s universe repo, doesn’t get security updates from the Debian security team, as it’s not considered an official part of Debian. Package maintianers have to provide security updates. https://www.debian.org/security/faq#contrib
The difference is that Ubuntu provide paid support for contrib packages, including patches. Debian doesn’t have any official paid support options.
No, they aren’t. You can switch to their Universe patches anytime, at your own risk. If you want Canonical to mitigate that risk for you, you pay. Simple, really.
Frankly this isn’t terrible. I’m sure there was a valid reason.
Oh snap
JFC, this misinformation again…
Oh God, a company wants to get paid for its support. Let’s tar and feather them.
