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Linux Mint Diverting Banshee Revenue
LinuxScribe writes "According Linux Mint founder Clement Lefebvre, the popular Linux Mint distribution has changed the Amazon.com affiliate code for the Banshee music player so that Mint, not Canonical or the GNOME Foundation, will receive the revenue from MP3 sales through Banshee. Though a trivial amount of money ($3.41 in November 2011), Linux Mint's actions still raise the question: how should revenue be shared between upstream and downstream FLOSS projects?"
Revenue? In my Linux? It's more likely than you think.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
A dollar for me, one for you, one for me, one for.... oh well, here's 41 cents at least.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Though a trivial amount of money ($3.41 in November 2011)
Trivial? No shit!
Seriously: find a better case for this discussion. Arguing over less than 4 bucks is going to make everyone involved seem petty and small-minded.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
I am confused?
Why would they have control of that in the first place?
If Mint owns Banshee, and Canonical and GNOME do not, then they should get the revenue.
And if they are able to change the code then does that non demonstrate that they have the right to?
And even if money should be shared with those other two, if Mint is the primary owner would it not make sense for it all to go to them and then they split it up themselves.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
How does one make money with a mint-diverting banshee?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
really, would it be that hard to let users choose?
Linux Mint 12 made GNOME3 usable. They deserve the $3.41.
The Mint takes all the money!
Okay, lets simplify this for all that don't want to read the articles.
Banshee's own link is dead so Canonical replaced it with their own in Ubuntu.
When Linux MINT saw this in the changelogs while repackaging, they did the same thing replacing it with their own.
I'm sure both would change this back if Banshee upstream started accepting donations again.
This has nothing to do with software freedom. It's not a question of whether Mint should have the right to do it, but whether they are jerks or not by doing it.
Perhaps, but my original comment still stands in that case.
In my book nobody is a "jerk" if the amount involved is 3,41 USD - unless children under the age of 7 are involved.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
The right thing would be to let the user decide. That is the spirit of open source. That and full disclosure of what information is being sent to whom, before any is actually sent.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because they don't have the right?
It's free software. They have the right to make whatever changes they intercoursing want as long as the end user gets the source code and the right to modify and redistribute it.
They are mutually exclusive!! You nerds need to understand that. You wrote something and released it for free, it implies $0 in revenues.
I know Nerds don't necessarily understand business but that's the reality geeks!
They're making a mint!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The folks writing Banshee released it with a Free license of their own free will. As long as Mint or Canonical or whoever complies with the terms of the license, what difference does it make? It's not like the little commission was part of the license agreement. If Mint wants to repackage Banshee as "The Banshee Sucks" media player and send all income from it to support Alfred E. Newman for president, it's their business.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I hereby impose a flat-tax for 3,41 USD per day for every human being not in the western nation to be payed out to the western nations as compensation for all the western tech that benefits non-western people.
Am I a jerk yet?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, if the bank is 20 miles away, we can safely assume that the cost to drive the money to the bank is $3.58...
I hate it when people use "-1 overrated" to mod something down because they don't agree with it. As far as the above post is concerned both "offtopic" or "troll" apply, why use "overrated"? And even if troll and offtopic didn't apply, why mod it down then? Simply disagreeing doesn't cut it.
Did anyone take a gander at the changelog?
// We ask that no one change this redirect URL. ALL (100%) revenue
// generated by this Banshee Amazon integration is sent directly to the
// non-profit GNOME Foundation.
- public const string REDIRECT_URL = "http://integrated-services.banshee.fm/amz/redirect.do/";
+ public const string REDIRECT_URL = "http://redir.linuxmint.com/mp3amazonstore/";
Wow, blatantly doing exactly the opposite of what the authors have kindly asked and redirecting funds to themselves. Completely within the terms of the GPL, completely within the bounds of what makes someone scum. I've heard the complaint that Ubuntu always takes from the ecosystem and never gives back, but this is cold, even for them. Well, this is a kick in the face for anyone who said that you can make money through making open source software, nomatter how you think of sharing your code while still covering your costs, someone's just going to rebrand it.
Apologies for my message looking terrible, I switched on slashdot's "code" format, I promise not to do it again.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Though a trivial amount of money ($3.41 in November 2011)
Lately, all one hears about is how Mint is more popular than Ubuntu and the top distro on Distrowatch. Well, maybe the trivial amount of money taken through Banshee shows how popular the distro really is.
Actually, it wasn't a troll. It was a serious point - that OSS is now effectively 1990's shareware, if we're going to be fighting over table scraps. The mere fact that it was marked troll indicates to me just how out of touch people are with the "roots" of original OSS. And yes, I am the parent poster.
People still BUY music!?
Whatever happened to that confunded P2P thing that everyone was crazy about a couple years back?
There is NOTHING worse than being ANTI-MEANING!
everyone doesn't use the Swiss Army Knife of media players: VLC. It wouldn't shock me much if that program could make a spreadsheet sing a tune.
I love how the slashdot moderation system really thinks people care about the difference between "interesting" and "insightful" and "troll" and "flamebait". Seriously, on what possible earth can this actually matter to you? Every other place uses simple +1 and -1, and many places are ditching the -1 because of the abuse.
You are talking about GPL. Open source has nothing to do with GPL. GPL is an evil license with political motivations and cheerleaders like you lack the necessary brain power to understand the long term implications of that. (No, I don't mean the "commie" evil crap, its just evil)
If someone authors a piece of open source software, they have every right to try and make money with it. The distributions have the right to try and make their money selling packaging, security, and update services. It would be an extremely rude and blatant theft for a distributor to rewrite the code in the software to steal the revenue, no matter how great or small that revenue stream might actually be.
Personally I prefer to structure my software so it can encourage use of a service provider model for it's complex grunt work, simplifying updates and maintenance of the overall product family. There will be no billing associated with the eventual client GUI software as a result -- you're encouraged to use that for free just so I can get a "click to submit" button out there to engage the for-fee services. You'll even be able to manufacture the code for the OSS rules without contacting the service -- the service is how I intend to deploy proprietary product and technology support and generate revenue from that support.
That's not to say there couldn't be competing service providers using the same tools and core technology, but if I didn't encourage that competition through open source licensing, I'd just be another "I want to be Microsoft/Apple/Google/IBM" dreamer instead of someone trying to provide actual value for your development dollars.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
At risk of feeding the troll, in what way is protecting my hard work from being co-opted into someone else's pockets "evil"? Or do you have other political concerns that I should know about? Perhapsyou're concerned that people will see the big caping hole in the BSD license that allows all of these shitty startups to get a free ride, and people will start using GPL to cover works...which would mean the jig is up?
The law does not legislate morality and cannot prevent greed by downstream distributors of a software package. However, it's PR suicide for a distributor to modify code to steal the paltry revenues generated by most OSS packages. That's effectively saying we're not satisfied with taking your free code homework, we want your lunch money, too.
And for a software distributor to do so (not the author) is as rude and socially unacceptable as any other bullying thief's behaviour.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yeah, but Mint didn't write the software, Banshee did. Mint is the distributor.
Dilbert RSS feed
IANAL, but if you make the following assumptions:
- amazon.com is a market
- referral codes are equivalent to affiliate advertising for that market
then a 3rd party that alters a piece of software without the user or developers consent (deception) in order to redirect such a revenue stream for their own benefit (fraud) is committing a computer crime which may result in a fine, imprisonment, or both. in california, at least.
This is the kind of behavior we expect of spyware, browser bars &c.
Does the number of applications (1) and the amount stolen ($3.41) make this an acceptable practice? no. what if it were many more applications and much more money?
Well, then certainly Canonical didn't author the software either. In theory, this is how open source software is supposed to work. The software's free, and you're free to try to make a buck packaging it and providing a better, more stable or more up-to-date experience. Mint isn't doing anything to Canonical. They're both doing what distros do. Now, whether this is a formula for making lots of money is still an open question. And if the writers of Banshee start feeling cheated out of their 'deserved' cut, well they might stop working on it. Which might not be the end of the world, since Canonical and Mint are free to take up the slack if they find it profitable (or rewarding) enough. Of course there are hundreds of ways this could degenerate into a huge mess... But somehow, Linux manages to soldier on.
And then there's Android. Because it's been embraced by hardware vendors, the revenue stream doesn't have to come from the software. That's a big plus. Of course Google's revenue stream comes from ads tied to the non-free bits. So far, that's working pretty well. But as folks like Amazon and Verizon start replacing the Google bits, things could break down there too.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
they should all fight gladiator style over the $3.41 two projects enter one project leaves.
So what ? The Mint team needs all the support they can get. Right now I'm hoping they will divert more of their attention to LMDE. It would be great if the team stopped piggybacking off Ubuntu and just focused on making a solid and polished Debian-based distro that appeals to everyone.
It looks like Clem needs money for his political agenda. Which you can tell is not very important. All of this is just plain stupid, but it does get hits and that's what it's meant to do.
Is this just for music MP3s? Because that would explain why I'd never noticed the "feature".
Or is it a bug?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
just use IceWM, KDE, *box then !