Here’s an example of how much Canonical (Ubuntu) “cares” about you and your “freedom”:

Ubuntu’s New Firefox Is Watching You

Slashdot article

Ubuntu zealots forum responses

“I still actually like Windows quite a bit, it made things easier. I just felt like I was helping a company who just wanted all my cash and didn’t care about what I thought. ”

Do you complain about “helping” McDonald’s, WalMart, Exxon, Amazon, etc?

Microsoft sells a product, and you can either buy it, or not buy it.

Insofar as caring what you think, do you think Apple cares? Do you think Canonical or any other distro is made up of caring individuals?

Try contacting [insert distro name]‘s developers and tell them “what you think”. Then be prepared for either indifference or extreme vitriol in return from them.

Let us know how it goes.

Sun, Novell, Red Hat, and Apple are in business to make money, period. Just like Microsoft.

For a long time Sun was criticized by the bearded forces of Linux and the FSF for not being Open Source. After a long time of plummeting stock prices, Sun started to open source some of their assets.

Notice, however that Sun made their real money from selling SPARC servers and Solaris, support, etc.

I don’t even know where to begin with Apple; they lock you into buying their hardware and their hardware only, if you want to use their OS.

Can you imagine the frenzy there would be if Microsoft did that?

Apple also makes use of Open Source software; GCC, X11, and much more, which they get free from the community and monetize. The same with Google.

The aforementioned companies are all corporations. They are legally obligated to care only about making money for their shareholders, though Sun and Novell haven’t been doing that very well.