Comment 8 for bug 1752417
Revision history for this message
| Robie Basak (racb) wrote Re: Out of the box, Ubuntu Bionic offers only insecure VPN option | #8 |
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Thank you for filing this bug. I agree that it's worth asking the desktop team to consider the default set of VPN plugins available by default from time to time.
> In fact, most major desktop OSes have removed PPTP altogether because it's insecure...
I'm commenting because I'd like to point out that I don't think this is a reasonable justification. Ubuntu is *user focused*. Users don't usually have the option of choosing their VPN technology since the server end is normally configured by someone else. Ideally I think Ubuntu should make sure that the majority of users can connect most easily to the VPN they already have. We should keep Ubuntu useful to the majority of Ubuntu users by default. This should be our primary motivator for any decision.
A secondary effect is that those in control of choosing VPN technologies might be influenced by the availability of clients in Ubuntu as default. It might be reasonable for us to change what we ship by default based on this effect, but it should only be secondary to the primary cause of shipping something useful to users.
Inconveniencing users by removing the availability of a component by default because we think they should be using something different is not something I think is appropriate for the Ubuntu project. I don't think it's appropriate for us to be hostile to our users in this manner. Ubuntu has traditionally done the exact opposite - for example by taking the pragmatic stance in making available non-free codecs and drivers instead of deliberately making it difficult for users who have already made non-free hardware and codec choices such as some other distributions.
If PPTP support is removed by default for policy (rather than technical or maintenance) reasons, I think it be done on the basis that Ubuntu VPN users don't need and won't miss PPTP support and not just because we think that the users are doing it wrong.
I have no objection to bringing in other plugins for default (eg. openvpn sounds like a great idea) but of course that is subject to a team being prepared to commit the time to maintain that.
(I'm just an unconnected Ubuntu developer and have no say in any final decision)