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GNOME Businesses The Almighty Buck Ubuntu Linux

Canonical To Divert Money From GNOME 374

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."
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Canonical To Divert Money From GNOME

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  • by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:04PM (#35318030)
    Ok, I'm getting a new business laptop in a week or so anyway, so it's the perfect time to start using debian instead of Ubuntu anyway.

    I can't say I will mind, the last couple of Ubuntu releases were shit, I couldn't even upgrade to the last one as a bug is still unfixed that makes wifi speeds crawl at 70kbyte/s tops for certain wireless cards.
    • I would recommend trying Arch. I started at Ubuntu but due to PPA hell I just installed Arch instead of adding repositories left and right just to get the latest software.

      • Well off-topic now from the Canonical/Banshee/GNOME shitfest, but I really like Arch. The best Linux setups I've ever had were Gentoo, back in 2005, and then Arch in about 2007. Unfortunately last time I installed Arch I had a motherfucker of a time getting X Windows running and ended up ditching it and putting Ubuntu back on because I'm running out of time to spend the time getting something running. When I get that computer back I'm going back to Arch again. (Or Gentoo if I suddenly start getting hard-ons

    • by Daengbo ( 523424 )

      Everyone realizes this is Open Source Software, right? Every distro (Arch, recommended above, Debian, and Red Hat) all "take" other people's software and make money off of it. Canonical isn't under any obligation to cut GNOME or Banshee in at all. If Banshee didn't want it this way, the devs should have released freeware.

      • That's not quite true. Arch and Debian do not make money off it.
        Beside Red Hat is one of the biggest open source contributor (Ubuntu isn't), so I am, for one, pretty much happy they get some money and don't die off it - so we keep getting more open source software.

        Oh, and +1 for Arch. Very well done distro.

        • by Daengbo ( 523424 )

          SPI is the official sponsor of the Debian Foundation [spi-inc.org] and Arch takes donations [archlinux.org]. Canonical makes some money off of FLOSS, but is not making a profit yet.

          I'm not a huge fan of Canonical, but this argument over modifying an open-source application is silly. (In addition, Canonical contributes a good amount to FLOSS given its size, though not necessarily to the kernel itself -- Launchpad, U1 client, app indicators, and Unity are just recent examples.)

  • by Sonny Yatsen ( 603655 ) * on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:09PM (#35318092) Journal

    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.

    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:15PM (#35318194)

      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.

      I suppose you could call it shenanigans; but it is all perfectly within the bounds of the MIT/X11 license Banshee is released under. There's nothing in there that says Canonical can't take Banshee's code and re-enable the Amazon mp3 functionality - quite the contrary, the freedom to modify it is expressly stated.

      This is one reason why more mainstream commercial licenses are restrictive. You can't give people the freedom to make changes, only to complain when you don't like the changes they've made.

      • by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:41PM (#35318582) Homepage

        You can't give people the freedom to make changes, only to complain when you don't like the changes they've made.

        Of course I can. Just because you are free to implement whatever changes you choose, does not mean that I am no longer free to disagree with your choices, or that I am not free to attempt to change your mind.

        You do not have to follow my desires, that is your freedom. I do not have to like your choices, that is my freedom.

      • by Sloppy ( 14984 )

        You can't give people the freedom to make changes, only to complain when you don't like the changes they've made.

        On the contrary: complaining is the one and only thing you can do. Why shouldn't they do it? This is a war of persuasion rather than a war of bullets or lawyers. Quite a step up.

    • The Ubuntu project is also losing support from developers over these things. I quit the project when they added the Ubuntu One music store, started selling proprietary software through software center, and became a peddler for MPEG-4 patent licenses. Most of my friends who used to be Ubuntu members have since quit as well, none of us want to follow them down the dark path they're headed.

      I should probably update the email address associated with my slashdot account.

  • by Skystrider ( 927762 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:10PM (#35318106)
    Which makes this whole kerfluffle look a bit ridiculous. But more than that, how does Canonical have control over the money that Banshee is donating to GNOME? Does Banshee send a check to Canonical with a request that it be forwarded to GNOME?
    • I think they are saying that they'll take Banshee out of their apt channels or something like that... basically using that as leverage to get Banshee to do what they want?

    • by pavon ( 30274 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:17PM (#35318222)

      Canonical modified the version of Banshee that it ships with Ubuntu to use their own Amazon affiliate code instead of Banshee's everytime a purchase is made. This is perfectly legal, since anyone can modify Banshee's source code. However, it is pretty shady IMHO; no better than the people that slap another name on OSS and try to sell it to unknowing consumers.

      • by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:37PM (#35318544) Journal

        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.

      • by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:36PM (#35319186)

        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.

    • by PraiseBob ( 1923958 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:49PM (#35318700)
      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.
      • by icebike ( 68054 )

        Dammit, where are my mod points when I need them.

        OSS programmers who finally find a way to get some meager return on their investment ought to at least use it to get some smoking good
        hardware in return. Even if it doesn't pay all the bills, donating ALL it to someone else's project seems pointless.

        Giving it all away to GNOME never made any sense in the first place. And the few shekels won't even show up
        on Gannonical's bottom line.

        But more to the point, this type of funding arrangement, where a couple cent

        • Well, I do have mod points, but I preferred to post in this thread.

          As usual, many ./'ers are taking the legalistic approach of noting that Mark Shuttleworth can switch the commission system in Banshee. But that kind of comment is hardly useful. Of course, he can switch the commission system.

          The more interesting question is: ought he?

          Consider: You take a piece of code, given freely, with only the compensation being to give a commission to a separate open source project (GNOME), and you switch it to give the

  • What the hell? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:10PM (#35318112)

    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.)

    • Oops, should have picked Debian.
    • by Draek ( 916851 )

      Because the media players Ubuntu includes have an integrated MP3 store, probably because the most popular media player in the US (read: Apple's) also has one.

      Besides, if you wanted nothing but an OS with some basic general-purpose tools you'd be using Debian, not Ubuntu which has always prided itself in being the "everything and the kitchen sink" of Linux distros.

      • What a coincidence! Squeeze just recently released, and is a lot more "modern" than the previous release.

        Sounds like a good time to install Debian.

      • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        the most popular media player in the US (read: Apple's

        That's a funny way to spell Windows Media Player. I mean, even after you discount the not insignificant amount of people who install a different player on their Windows boxes, Microsoft still wins through sheer market share. Keep trying, Apple. But $110/bbl oil is not conducive to lavish consumer spending.

      • You are spot on with your analogy. Ubuntu calls itself "Linux for Human Beings" and is trying to be the cuddle and coddle flavor of the Linux World. It is trying to make itself more attractive to that need their OS to think for them. In a manner of speaking.

    • Use Mint. It's like Ubuntu, only with less commercialization and more useful stuff.

    • Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by icebike ( 68054 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:54PM (#35319356)

      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.)

      Oh, climb down from that ledge before you hurt yourself.

      You don't have to have anything to do with the mp3 store. Its a feature, not a requirement.
      You can install anything you want, and buy music any way you want, or not buy at all.

    • by kikito ( 971480 )

      Uninstall banshee and install any of the other players if you don't like it. The mp3 purchase thingie is fairly small and non-intrusive in any case.

  • Dirty hippies all over the world vow to not bath again until travesty corrected. How is this newsworthy? Business stay in business by making money, Canonical must start sometime.

  • Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fandingo ( 1541045 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:15PM (#35318196)

    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.

    • by lgordon ( 103004 )

      What? KDE doesn't get a cut? The HURD doesn't get a cut?

    • a couple possibilities.

      1. they hate their job, the compromises they must make to survive it, therefore anything involving profit = evil, because their own workplace requires them to be such heartless turds.

      2. they live in their parents basement and dont understand the emotional weight of a lack of an income stream

      3. they believe any sort of corporation involvement will pollute the thoughtspace of linux (nevermind the fact that linux exists because of massive corporate donations)

      4. speculation... maybe they

    • thank you. the rambling slashdot "summary" left me completely confused as to why i should give a shit even if someone was "harmed". your summary makes it clear that this is pretty much a win/win as far as the parties involved are concerned (and who else should be?).

      • by xonker ( 29382 ) *

        Don't depend on the summary or the commenter's summary - RTFA. It is *not* a win/win - and the Banshee devs do not characterize it as such.

        • Re:Flamebait (Score:5, Informative)

          by retchdog ( 1319261 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @08:48PM (#35319828) Journal

          fair enough. let's see if i have this gordian knot figured.

          the banshee team default position is to take nothing for themselves and pass on the full referrer fee, i.e. 0.1 of banshee amazon purchases, to GNOME. banshee's amazon service steps on Canonical's ubuntu one service, so Canonical didn't like that and offered to give 25% to GNOME, making it 0.025 of banshee amazon purchases. banshee was pissed and wanted the amazon part removed completely from the ubuntu distro. Canonical is overriding this (it's their distro and the code is Free) but as a sop is kicking in 25% of their ubuntu one profit to GNOME.

          apparently banshee has no financial self-interest in this matter, while Canonical has their own. if Canonical went with the banshee default, GNOME would get 0.1 of all amazon's gross profit through banshee (call it AGross). under Canonical's first offer, GNOME would get 0.025*AGross. under banshee's (imho rather hissy) counter-offer GNOME would get _nothing at all_ from ubuntu users. Canonical overrides this and makes the "benevolent dictator" offer that GNOME gets 0.025*AGross plus 25% of Canonical's net profit from ubuntu one, for a total of 0.025*AGross+0.25*UNet.

          Yeah, Canonical are being assholes here (and it's worth noting, taking a very large middleman cut). However, GNOME's worst outcome would have been Banshee's counteroffer. The banshee default, which is 0.1*Agross, would be best for GNOME if UNet0.3AGross. I do find the latter VERY unlikely, so yeah, GNOME is getting shafted relative to the banshee default. On the other hand, they are doing better than if banshee had run their scorched earth policy, and Canonical has (imho) earned some soft social capital by offering a user-friendly linux and is thus delivering new money to GNOME.

          here is the run-down: canonical benefits; banshee gets screwed but loses nothing in terms of cash; GNOME... well, it really depends on how big the buying-music-through-linux market is. i wouldn't personally be surprised if ubuntu quadruples this market, so GNOME may well pull out ahead.

          in the bigger picture, it does seem a bit unfair in retrospect that novell (the banshee sponsor) fore went the first cut of these banshee-deals. on the other hand, they're novell...

          • ewige blumenkraft!

            i meant that the Banshee default would be best if UNet < 0.3AGross, and that the Canonical position is best if UNet > 0.3AGross. The latter is VERY unlikely, so GNOME is getting shafted relative to the default (but may pull out ahead, as i say above).

          • > GNOME would get _nothing at all_ from ubuntu users

            It has been shown time and time again that humans prefer to default to having nothing over being treated unfairly. IMO, this is one of the strongest built-in social regulation tools our evolutionary path equipped us with.

            It ensures that a majority will try to strive towards perceived(!) fairness.

            That local customs, prejudices and whatnot influence this perception is a given.

    • Thank you for clearing this up. Additionally, it looks like Banshee, by becoming default Ubuntu player, is getting more audience already. That's a win for Banshee developers, too.

      Regards,
      Ruemere

      • it's a win for everyone (except rhythmbox i guess). rhythmbox sucks immensely. i can't believe i used it for months before finally finding banshee in the repos. ugh.

      • Re:Flamebait (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara.hudson@b ... com minus distro> on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:38PM (#35319212) Journal
        Two facts:
        1. The Banshee developers were not taking a penny. All revenue was being donated to GNOME. So this is not a "win" for the devs in any shape or form, but it IS a loss for GNOME.
        2. Novell sponsored a lot of the development. Looks like they practice the concept of "Ubuntu" (humanity towards others) better than Canonical does.
    • Sure, the deal sounds like shit for Gnome...

      I agree with the rest of your post, except for this bit.
      How is this shit for Gnome, it is not like the Gnome project is entitled to this money in some way. They are receiving 25%, when they could very well be receiving 0. Canonical is actually being generous here by donating those 25%.
      As you point out the banshee developers don't have any problem with this. But even if they did, they already gave written permission to do this (the license).
      Canonical has the right to keep 100% of this money if they so

    • by foobsr ( 693224 )
      Canonical isn't perfect, but why such the hate lately?

      Maybe some distant relation to 'apps' stopping to work with an upgrade or the whole boot if you are on a WUBI installed system?

      CC.
    • Re:Flamebait, not (Score:4, Informative)

      by Klivian ( 850755 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:39PM (#35319228)
      Uhm, no. That is not correct RTFA. As it is, the Banshee developers elected to disable the store by default, preferring it to Canonicals split deal. The Banshee developers decided that requiring the users to manually activate the store, but giving GNOME a 100% cut was preferable. Canonical asked the developers to choose from 2 options, but when their choice was not what Canonical wanted they simply did the opposite anyway.
    • by xonker ( 29382 ) *

      Did you RTFA? The maintainers they asked were *not* happy with the decision and the maintainers have *gone on record* as saying it's "unreasonable" - I know that one of the OMGUbuntu folks has been going around saying he's a Banshee contributor (he is, but not one of the maintainers) and trying to characterize it as everything is OK - but that is NOT the case.

  • What a mess. Ubuntu / Canonical rubbing people up the wrong way again.

    Thank goodness for Amarok.... that is, when Amarok developers eventually get their fingers out of their behind and add back all the features they stripped from KDE3 Amarok 1 for the so called "improved" KDE4 Amarok 2 version.

  • Nothing wrong with making a buck, its how you do it that matters.

    This does smell a bit foul.

  • Irony (Score:4, Insightful)

    by halfaperson ( 1885704 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:23PM (#35318332) Homepage
    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.
    • I wish I had mod points.
    • by kikito ( 971480 )

      Apparently, the devs are not giving any opinions at all. The original post is from a random guy, not related with Banshee or Gnome.

    • by basotl ( 808388 )
      I would mod you insightful, if I could. Funny normally I have a fist full of mod points.
    • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      You're confused.

      This isn't the gnome "developers" being upset. This is about the gnome USERS being upset.

      Although it might motivate a few of us to give directly to GNOME just out of spite.

  • If Banshee disables Amazon, then theoretically that would increase the sales to Canonical's MP3 store. So by disallowing Banshee from doing this, basically Canonical is saying that their 75% cut of the affiliate money from people willing to buy MP3s from Amazon is more profitable than the direct sales they would get from people willing to buy from their no-name MP3 store. In the spirit of the original article, I tried to be as confusing with this post as possible.

  • The problem Linux has had is the ability to help a company keep it's lights on. When it's sold by companies like IBM or Redhat, people are paying for the name more than the product. The community, which is a strength of Linux, is rather harsh when you try stuff, screaming about the "free as in beer/speech" bit.

    And that's fine. The strength of one's opinion is why we love Linux. Still, most ignore the fact that the free "as in beer" part still has to be paid by somebody. So the community ends up ditc
  • I still like ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)

    by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:33PM (#35318486)

    I put ubuntu on one of my laptops because it Just Worked(tm). That was version 9.04. Everything on the machine worked, and it even handled setting up the broadcom wifi firmware for me so I didn't have to futz with fwcutter, et al.

    I've been upgrading steadily ever since. At this point in time, I've been let down more often by the hardware itself (two HD failures and now the CPU is dying...) than by Ubuntu.

    Ubuntu is stable, reliable, and the single most user friendly linux distro I have ever used, and it keeps getting better. It lets me do what I need to do without getting in my way so I have more time left over for other inconsequential things like... oh... my life.

    I just don't get all this indignation regarding a company that is trying to put out a viable consumer friendly OS for free, while trying to make enough money (in an honest, not privacy invading way) so that it can continue to do so.

    • I just don't get all this indignation regarding a company that is trying to put out a viable consumer friendly OS for free, while trying to make enough money (in an honest, not privacy invading way) so that it can continue to do so.

      Its like being a Canadian entertainer, everyone loves you as long as you're the underdog but as soon as you get a movie or record deal in the US and start making money you have sold out and are now part of the machine.

    • Sounds like it is the *only* distribution you have used in the last 10 years. Try something else and be amazed. All those silly bugs that stop you from just *getting something done* in Ubuntu disappear.

      Oh, and I would have thought what all the indignation is about is pretty obvious? They are putting out an OS for consumers to use for free, but in every single release they strip out the functionality that consumers love and replace it with something most of them hate. They are effectively compounding proble

    • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

      I think some of the objection is that Ubuntu takes 300GB of source code written by others, adds probably 10MB of source they've written, does some QA, and distributes it for a profit, giving very little back to those who wrote the original 300GB.

      How much money does the guy who contributed 1000 lines to gcc get from the Ubuntu mp3 store? I doubt the store would work if it weren't for gcc building their code, or whatever.

      Lots of people contribute to FOSS for the fun of it, and they don't really expect anythi

  • Something sure does seem fishy about this whole arrangement, so I can understand why bloggers have been going apeshit (though the developers seem OK with it [slashdot.org]). Historically, this was a tactic of commercial malware, and overwriting third-party affiliate IDs with your own - in the browser or any other HTTP stream - was a good way to get your product removed by antispyware applications [spywareguide.com]. (Now, get off my lawn!)

  • mplayer (Score:4, Funny)

    by clang_jangle ( 975789 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @06:50PM (#35318720) Journal
    Real geeks know that mplayer is still the One True Media Player for *nix. And we use it from the CLI and have our fave streams and playlists scripted.
  • by nomadic ( 141991 )
    The last time I made a serious attempt to use Linux as a main desktop machine I could not find a good mp3 player. Banshee was the best, but too buggy and the interface didn't feel right, sort of a knockoff of itunes which already has a pretty lousy interface. Nothing came close to WinAmp, which despite it's horrible crime of being Windows-only (though I guess it's moving to android too) is the best mp3 player I've ever used.
    • XMMS was fine last time I used Linux. Not exactly full-featured but if you're comparing with WinAmp you're not looking at iTunes anyway -- you're looking at a simple media player that's nice enough to use.

      I would point out that I last used XMMS about five years back, though, before all my machines turned into Macs, not entirely through decisions of my own, so it might be development has totally stalled and it's not worth my recommendation. These things happen...

    • by tftp ( 111690 )

      WinAmp [...] is the best mp3 player I've ever used.

      Try AIMP2 [aimp2.us].

  • Just another reason to stick with Fedora.

  • I find this incredibly ironic. It is no mistake that Free and Open software licences grant the moral right for recipients to modify their code as they see fit. It the the licences very reason for existing.

    If the Banshee developers didn't want other people profiting off the code they should have released it (or the plugin if possible) under a non-commercial licence.

    To grant someone a Free licence and then complain bitterly when someone has the temerity to use the rights intentionally granted therein see
  • by Dcnjoe60 ( 682885 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:27PM (#35319102)

    Before everybody starts bashing Ubuntu (this is slashdot afterall), the article mentions that the analysts feel this is a better deal for gnome than what they had. Gnome now gets 25% of sales from Ubuntu One and Amazon. Not just for Banshee, but also Rhythmbox. From Amazon, Canonical is the affiliate and as such aren't required to give anything to Gnome for the use of Banshee or Rhythmbox.

    Ubuntu may make mistakes in it's relationship with its partners, but in this case, it appears that they are being quite generous.

    • by xonker ( 29382 ) *

      Really not what the original article says - have you read it?

      From TFA:

      In fact, Burt says that the Banshee team had unanimously opted to turn off the Amazon store when given the choice, but now "Canonical came up with their own plan: essentially the option we rejected."

      Further, Burt doesn't seem pleased with the way Canonical has handled the situation. "Canonical offering us options and then going back on them when we didn't pick their preferred one was not reasonable." Lorentz says he agrees "wholeheartedly

  • What if (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TopSpin ( 753 ) on Friday February 25, 2011 @07:56PM (#35319376) Journal

    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.

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