Midori useragent does not specify full operating system

Bug #674365 reported by ethana2
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
midori (Debian)
Fix Released
Unknown
midori (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: midori

Midori on Ubuntu 10.10 as of November 11, 2010 identifies itself as running on Linux, but does not specify Ubuntu.
Since Canonical has fixed this bug in Chromium and Epiphany, Midori is probably the most popular open source browser for gnome that is still affected, besides firefox pre-releases. The useragent I'm using in the current version of Midori is

Midori/0.2 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) WebKit/531.2+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu/10.10

Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote :

Thank you for reporting this to Ubuntu. I linked a Debian report with a similar request. I don't believe we should carry a diff from Debian just for this, but if you can answer the Debian maintainer's request, then Debian might be willing to include it as well. The request is:
  If you can cite a standards document (e.g. an IEEE RFC or a W3C TR)
  that tells me to include "Debian" in the User-Agent string, I'll
  consider it.

Changed in midori (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
ethana2 (ethana2) wrote :

Epiphany identified as Debian until a few months ago, and I filed a bug against that, which Canonical fixed.

As long as somebody within Canonical has been made aware of the bug, which given the long list of notified persons I think is probable, nothing else needs to be done by either you nor me. They know what they're doing.

Changed in midori (Debian):
status: Unknown → Won't Fix
Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote :

Generally, this type of fix should be made upstream. In the case of Epiphany, we already had a diff with Debian, with Midori we don't and I don't think this is worth introducing one. In addition, for Epiphany, the change existed and was accidentally dropped. It does not seem like Midori ever had this in Ubuntu. Also, please note that Midori is community supported. We try not to create a diff with Debian unless it's necessary as this requires a developer to manually update the package. If you do not have an answer to the Debian maintainer's request, I will just close this bug as Won't Fix like the Debian one.

Revision history for this message
ethana2 (ethana2) wrote :

Browser useragents really should be generated on first run or at install time using $ cat /etc/issue

Altering a package just to fix a useragent is the wrong way to go about it entirely, but it's the way everyone has been doing it for a long, long time.

If it would please everyone, I would gladly apply $50 to the upstream development of $ cat /etc/issue - based useragent generation. I just really doubt anyone would accept that solution either. This isn't an issue I expect the community to be particularly interested in, as it pertains primarily to branding. If the community bears the full burden of maintaining the package, I don't expect them to try to fix this. Wontfix is fantastic, as long as the bug record remains accessible for maybe a few years.

Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote :

Thank you for the update. Bug records should be around as long as Launchpad is, which we hope is a very long time. :) Marking Won't Fix for the time being. If Debian ends up including this in the future, I'm happy to fix it for Ubuntu as well. Please report any other issues you may find.

Changed in midori (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Won't Fix
Changed in midori (Debian):
status: Won't Fix → Fix Released
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