[tjr]

Resistance to this design decision by Canonical should have been intense when it was announced, and not when someone with an audience decided to state their opinion.

It probably should have been. I don't use Ubuntu, and I had never heard of the issue at all until Richard's article. Knowing about the issue doesn't have an immediate practical impact on me, but I will likely make it a point to avoid Ubuntu in the future.

[klez]

Actually multiple venues talked (sometimes critically) about this problem, Mark Shuttleworth made a blog post about it, criticizing the critics. So it's really nothing new.