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Canonical To Divert Money From GNOME
Julie188 writes "Canonical has reacted to backlash over its insane deal with Banshee by establishing a marginally better new deal. Banshee is a media/music player for Linux (and Windows and Mac) that supports music purchases via Amazon MP3. It will ship with Ubuntu 11.04. Amazon pays 10% to its affiliates — websites and software that send it business. Banshee had been donating its Amazon affiliate proceeds to GNOME. But Amazon's MP3 store competes with Canonical's MP3 store, Ubuntu One. So Canonical thought that it should help itself to 75% of the affiliate money from Banshee/Amazon sales and leave 25% for GNOME. The Banshee group said no thanks, we'll disable Amazon for Ubuntu users. Canonical is refusing to let Banshee disable Amazon. It has instead said it will contribute some money from Ubuntu One to GNOME but it still intends on keeping the lion's share for itself."
Remember the story a few days ago about why Ubuntu no longer gets love from slashdotters and the Linux community? I think shenanigans like this says it all.
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I downloaded Ubuntu a while back because it was simple to install, it was straightforward to use, and it meant I didn't have to spend my time doing sysadmin-y things.
But what is all this bullshit about integrated mp3 stores? I want a fucking operating system with some basic general-purpose tools. If I want to buy mp3's I'll go do that; I don't want my operating system worrying about how I should. (Of course, I expect my distribution to include a media /player/ -- that's something else entirely.)
Remember, it is free as in libre, not gratis.
According to whom?
Your comment about "real" Linux users is basically the attitude that turns off a lot of people from even listening to reasonable arguments about free (libre) software.
This is a complete mischaracterization of what has happened. There have been several bloggers that have been outraged on the behalf the Banshee/Gnome developers, but the Banshee devs have not been upset with this decision.
In fact, the situation is far better than the summary says. First, Banshee will ship with the store enabled on Ubuntu with a 75/25 affliate split between Canonical and Gnome, respectively. Neither side has a problem with this. Second, the official Canonical music store will do a similar split (75/25), even though Gnome doesn't have anything to do with its development.
Sure, the deal sounds like shit for Gnome, especially the Banshee part, but the freaking people that develop the application weren't upset by it. Furthermore, Canonical is splitting their store.
The developers that have the right to complain about this decision aren't, so it doesn't seem like anyone else should either.
Canonical isn't perfect, but why such the hate lately? If you aren't a developer or directly related to the Gnome Foundation, STFU. Stop being outraged on other people's behalf.
I'm no Ubuntu fan really, but I find it quite funny how the GNOME devs are famous for not giving a fuck about their users opinions, and still they're somehow outraged when someone doesn't give a fuck about theirs.
Jesus had a UNIX beard.
no better than the people that slap another name on OSS and try to sell it to unknowing consumers.
That would appear to only be valid if the end customer doesn't know. If Canonical is being upfront about it, and not trying to hide it, then I am not sure it is "wrong" in any broad sense of the phrase. Not preferable to Banshee? Perhaps, as you state, the license clearly allows it. Banshee has actively chosen an license that specifically allows this, if it is a big deal, they can change licenses. Based on comments above, the developers aren't the ones who are complaining anyway, just the bloggers.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Why on earth do the Banshee developers give away 100% of the money rather than using it towards paying themselves and investing that money into their own software in some way?
More importantly, why on earth would Canonical piss off large swaths of the Linux community over something that has so far only generated a couple thousand dollars. Maybe in a few years of building, it might add up to the salary they pay one developer.
s/supply/repackaging an improved and differentiated version/
Anyway judging Canonical is irrelevant, they are free to do what they want and you are free to follow them or follow others or fork. Your document aren't hostages of canonical choices. That's the good thing of FOSS.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I don't think it's shady at all. Canonical build a complete operating environment. They take the majority of the code from the community, patch it heavily, contribute their own functionality and server resources, and integrate it all. They aren't simply selling a CD with stuff they've burned from the web. What the end user gets is Ubuntu, not a software collection.
When that user installs Ubuntu, installs a media player from Canonical's app centre, and then buys music, that sale is directly attributable to Ubuntu. If Banshee didn't exist, Canonical would use another media player to do the same thing or write their own if there wasn't one suitable. The actual media player in use isn't important. Canonical built the product, Canonical pushed the service, and Canonical runs the servers behind the app centre.
On a side note, doesn't just about every distro do the same thing with Firefox's default homepage and Google? Except without contributing anything at all back to Mozilla.org?
I'm not particularly enthused about the way the article writer spun this. It sounds like somebody at Canonical overstepped his bounds and made a mistake. But the article author keeps saying Canonical shouldn't have... Canonical shouldn't have... Canonical shouldn't have... the author sounds like he has an axe to grind and is using this screwup as an excuse. It reads like he's seen that somebody made a mistake but is deliberately pushing the idea that Canonical the organisation did this deliberately.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I've never heard of Banshee. I suspect most people haven't. Now it will appear with every new Ubuntu 11.04 install.
What if the amount of money heading to Gnome (the 25% of Amazon's 10% kickback) is actually greater than the 100% Banshee has been donating? What if it's many times greater? What if this, in part, also means that Ubuntu gets to keep its doors open? What if folks made lots of Amazon purchases via Ubuntu's Banshee instead of inventing.... yet another ... reason to act like malcontents?
Canonical needs to figure out a business model that amounts to more than Shuttleworth’s good graces. There are no profitable desktop Linux desktop publishers. That is not a workable long term situation. In 2008 Canonical said Ubuntu had 3-5 years to get profitable. If the low end of that range means anything then Times Up! as they say..
"insane"... Slashdot's editorial judgement is actually regressing.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Question:How EXACTLY do you expect Canonical to pay for the serious R&D required to bring Ubuntu up the the levels of OSX, iOS, and Windows 7 in ease of use? And how EXACTLY are they supposed to pay the developers required to do the above? Shuttleworth may have money but he ain't no Bill Gates in the bank account dept, and like it or not coders have families that need to be fed, roofs on houses that need paying for, car payments, etc.
It is THIS, this right here, that to me points out a serious and critical flaw in the whole FLOSS philosophy. You expect the "community" to magically do everything for free for the good of all while conveniently ignoring that fact that there are fun jobs and shitty jobs in programming and if someone doesn't pay serious $$$ for the shitty jobs then the shitty jobs simply don't get done period. Nobody LIKES doing bug fixes, nobody LIKES doing code cleanup or writing long boring documentation which is why those jobs don't get done under the current model and instead of fixing bugs you get a new version with new features and new bugs instead, and so many docs are "To be done later".
You know for all the bitching about companies trying to make money I don't see any of the coders here "pulling an RMS" and living like a pauper with no real possessions to speak of simply to ensure your principles. The simple fact is if Canonical wants Ubuntu to be a world class OS and be able to stand toe to toe with OSX, iOS and Win 7 then they are gonna have to do a lot of work, and a great deal of that work is gonna suck and be about as fun as a trip to the DMV. The reason companies like RH spend millions investing in Linux for server applications is they can make more millions by doing so and Canonical is the ONLY one that I've seen spending real money to improve the desktop situation. But Shuttleworth can't bankroll it forever, which means it not only has to break even but make enough to keep up with the R&D of much larger companies like Apple. That ain't easy folks and is gonna take some serious moola, like it or not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.