While I appreciate the clarification for those who did not understand what pro is or what the messages in apt were originating from, I feel this clarification is only the first step. The next goal should be to remove the advertisement from apt completely. I agree with the commercial Pro subscription service and the effort Canonical is putting into keeping these packages updated on their dime. And I hope it’s a good source of incoming to pay for that service.
But advertising a commercial subscription as part of a critical update tool in maintaining infrastructure is not the right place to do it. Users and admins have an expectation of trust, reliability and output from doing updates. Showing updates to the end user that they can’t install because they are not willing or able to pay for a commercial subscription(regardless of who qualifies for a free subscription) breaks that trust and reliability in the apt update system. I’m sorry, but leaving it up to the user/admin to manually delete the advertisement across 3 or 3000 devices is not an adequate solution. Unfortunately, I do not have a better place to display these advertisements. At the very least, a delineation between pro updates and regular updates would be better than the current state. As an example, phased updates and other updates held back for different reasons are mixed in with the commercial subscription updates with no way to tell the apart and which ones are available to install without the commercial subscription. This would break automation and reporting.
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