"Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?" (2012) is stallman's response to Ubuntu's introduction of the Amazon search lens in Ubuntu 12.10, a feature that transmitted users' local desktop search queries to Amazon and Canonical servers without clear prior consent. stallman argued that this constituted spyware behavior — software designed to collect and transmit user data to third parties without the user's knowledge or meaningful consent.
The essay is a pointed application of the free-software-definition's principles to a distribution that is nominally free software. Ubuntu is built primarily on free software, and stallman acknowledged this; his point is that the Amazon lens violated user trust in a specific way that was incompatible with the freedom-respecting principles that free software ostensibly embodies. The four-freedoms include the freedom to study what software does; but even when users had the theoretical freedom to study the code, most did not, and the behavior was not disclosed clearly.
stallman used the incident to make a broader point about the gap between "open source" and "free software" as practical standards. A system can be nominally open source while still incorporating features that surveil users — because open source discourse focuses on development methodology and code availability, not on whether the software actually respects users' freedom and privacy in operation.
The essay recommended that Ubuntu users either configure the system to disable the Amazon lens or switch to a different distribution. It also contributed to community pressure on Canonical that eventually led to the feature being disabled by default, then removed entirely.
The incident illustrates the surveillance-vs-democracy concerns that stallman was developing in parallel: even free software distributions could become vectors for surveillance if not held to the higher standard of actually respecting user freedom in practice, not just in license terms.