Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) [LWN.net]

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:13 UTC (Wed) by cdamian (subscriber, #1271) [Link] (25 responses)

"Amazon MP3 support in Banshee competes with Ubuntu's own offering, Ubuntu One" - This could be a quote straight from an Apple iOS application rejection letter.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:28 UTC (Wed) by Thue (guest, #14277) [Link] (2 responses)

Except that unlike Apple
1) The user is free to install the Amazon store on their own
2) Anybody can make a Ubuntu derivative which includes the Amazon store

The money for free software has to come from somewhere. If this is the solution, then I can personally live with it.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:33 UTC (Wed) by cdamian (subscriber, #1271) [Link] (1 responses)

I obviously didn't mean it that serious. But it is one reason why I like Fedora, who just make their money in a different way.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:01 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Fedora doesn't make money.

Red Hat makes money.

Red Hat spends some of the money it makes providing the infrastructure that Fedora uses.

Red Hat _deliberately_ separated Fedora as a brand to differentiate it to better separate community efforts from monetization efforts to _reduce_ the surface over which conflicts of interest between business interests and community interests overlap and get mixed up. They are not completely separated, because community interests will always be wider than available resources which Red Hat can prudently provide Fedora and still remain a solvent business.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:43 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (21 responses)

The difference is Apple has very deliberately created a closed garden for themselves and their consumers. I'm not happy with Apple's model, but at the same time I can't point to them and say they are hypocritical or self-destructive in their protectionism. They've done the work in-house to create the framework, the applications and the service...all the pieces necessary to have an integrated retail music experience. If they feel they need to protect that by excluding other services..that is highly self-consistent...even if its anti-competitive aspects of that policy end up causing them to defend themselves in a court of law at some point.

Canonical on the other hand...hasn't done the work necessary to build a closed platform like Apple has with iOS. Canonical's model relies heavily on the work being done by others in important pieces of their platform stack...in this particular case the upstream Banshee and GNOME developers. So when Canonical wants an inequitable high percentage of the revenue flowing through the banshee application...its both hypocritical and self-destructive. Heavily taxing growing revenue streams for upstream projects your platform is meant to rely on (because you don't have the engineering resources to build your own best of breed integrated applications) is eating your own seed corn for the sake of short term gain.

And let me stress the inequitablely high percentage of revenue part of that comment. The offer on the table was for Canonical to _take_ 75% of the revenue from the Amazon storefront they didn't build in an application they don't help develop. There is no mention if Canonical was also offering to _give_ 25% of the UIMS store revenue to banshee developers for producing an application that Canonical could use instead of Canonical expensing the manpower to build their own app.

If Canonical wants to mimic the closed garden revenue stream control that Apple has over iOS,then Canonical needs to go back to square one and build a closed garden that they can control instead of trying to pound an open ecosystem model into a closed garden model...it's a round peg/square hole situation.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:58 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (5 responses)

> Canonical on the other hand...hasn't done the work necessary to build a closed platform like Apple has with iOS. Canonical's model relies heavily on the work being done by others in important pieces of their platform stack...in this particular case the upstream Banshee and GNOME developers. So when Canonical wants an inequitable high percentage of the revenue flowing through the banshee application...its both hypocritical and self-destructive. Heavily taxing growing revenue streams for upstream projects your platform is meant to rely on (because you don't have the engineering resources to build your own best of breed integrated applications) is eating your own seed corn for the sake of short term gain.

I think that Canonical and Banshee can both benefit from this arrangement. Canonical will benefit from the potential profits and Banshee can benefit from the massive increase in exposure and support that Canonical can provide them by making them the default player on the premier Linux desktop OS.

If you think it is unlikely that Banshee's Amazon MP3 support support will get discovered if it's disabled by default... imagine how difficult it will be to find when the entire Banshee application is not installed by default.

One of the benefits to using software like Banshee is that it's plug able. Otherwise why use anything other then just Totem or whatever for playing music? From the comment below it indicates that Ubuntu and Banshee folks are quite amicable with this compromise. Ubuntu gave them reasonable terms and the plugin is still there. The ball is now in Gnome and Banshee's court to promote the plugins and other stores that Banshee can support. If they do a good job they should be able to get more money then if Ubuntu left the plugin enabled and did nothing to promote it's usage.

While the potential revenue stream and profitability of something like this is far from assured it's a promising development that people are seeking ways to make decent profits from software without really attempting to restrict user's access to it.

> If Canonical wants to mimic the closed garden revenue stream control that Apple has over iOS,then Canonical needs to go back to square one and build a closed garden that they can control instead of trying to pound an open ecosystem model into a closed garden model...it's a round peg/square hole situation.

Yeah... no. I'd rather they not do that actually. That is much worse then what they are doing now.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:08 UTC (Wed) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (1 responses)

Ubuntu gave them reasonable terms

"Give us three quarters of the money you make, or we turn your revenue stream off entirely" would not be many people's idea of 'reasonable'.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:22 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]

Well we do give 100% of the revenue away as it is and in both the suggested options the benefactors are entities that supports us and our ecosystem.

I don't really see the problem and surely with being the default in a distribution such as Ubuntu the GNOME Foundation would still see a healthy income even at 25% from the Amazon integration.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 19:03 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I'm not saying Canonical should follow Apples model. I'm saying that the current sort of in-between-ness of the business path Canonical is following fits what they are doing now about as well as my high school prom tux fits me now.

I think the follow-up comment from jzb on his own article sums the inequity in the proposal nicely:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/banshee-amazon-stor...

"A fifty-fifty split may be fair, but I don't see how Canonical is entitled to the majority share here. Hell, even Apple "only" asks for 30% of subscription fees, etc., on its platform."

Platform gatekeepers can be overly aggressive in the revenue sharing mandates. The mark of a well executable platform taxation strategy is to reign in the impulse to punitively tax external developers. A 75% revenue grab is simply untenable. And if Canonical wants this sort of revenue cut from potential end-user focused ISV's they won't be seeing a huge uptake in their re-invented partner repository centered on the software store. This sort of steep revenue sharing will most assuredly kill sustained interest from people like game developers who might be interested in reaching Ubuntu users via for-pay placement in the software center.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 19:09 UTC (Wed) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] (1 responses)

So in other words Canonical is saying to the Banshee folks: pay us to be in Ubuntu.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 19:36 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

It would be more correct to say, "pay us to select your application as the default application in Ubuntu even though we've already selected your application to be the default because we think you guys did an excellent job building the application and we don't want to spend the money or the time building or our application"

And its important to note that Canonical has in the past changed the affiliate ID for the rhythmbox magnatunes store in the past..and garnered a small amount of revenue that would have otherwise gone to GNOME from Magnatunes.
http://www.ubuntu-user.com/Online/News/Ubuntu-One-Music-S...

So in one sense this is progress. Canonical didn't just hijack the Banshee revenue stream entirely. They learned _something_ from the experiment with Magnatunes. (Interesting to note that even with magnatunes enabled by default in Ubuntu..prior to the U1MS being available...Ubuntu users only accounted for 1/6th of the rhythmbox based magnatune revenue...fascinating don't you think if you ascribe to the idea that Ubuntu was the most popular rhythmbox distributor at the time).

Canonical actually reverted rhythmbox back to the default at some point and left the plugin enabled by default as well.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:18 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (2 responses)

> And let me stress the inequitablely high percentage of revenue part of that comment. The offer on the table was for Canonical to _take_ 75% of the revenue from the Amazon storefront they didn't build in an application they don't help develop

I know that we all value software development much more highly than other activities around here, but let me play devil's advocate for a bit. What percentage of Canonical's users would be using banshee if not for Canonical's efforts with Ubuntu? It's clear that some proportion of Ubuntu's user base -- perhaps a large portion, and perhaps especially those who expect to buy music through their music player -- wouldn't have Linux on their desktop if it weren't for Canonical's efforts.

I have plenty of doubts about Canonical's business model, decisions, and whether they really "deserve" their spot as *the* newbie distribution, but some portion of that revenue -- perhaps a very large portion -- really is due to their efforts, one way or another. Just not in developing the app.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:30 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

For a company which has self-described itself as doing the last 10% of the work..to request that 75% of a revenue stream be given to them seems a bit out of place. 10% sure, 25% maybe, 50% if revenue sharing of _all_ retail revenue include U1MS as well as Amazon were on offer. But 75%..as a starting position for a revenue sharing negotiation... that's cutthroat.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 23:14 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

If you say so. I don't really have an intuition.

But I guess they got negotiated down from an unreasonable 75% to a more reasonable 100% (i.e., directing people to U1MS instead). So compromise worked? ;-)

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:26 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (5 responses)

The offer on the table was for Canonical to _take_ 75% of the revenue from the Amazon storefront they didn't build in an application they don't help develop.

They don't develop neither build that application - they distribute it. That Banshee application wouldn't generate any revenue if it would just languish in source code form on some server.

Of course, I have no idea how big is the Ubuntu users' share in all Banshee installations (probably nobody has exact figures), so maybe that 75% is not that much or way too much. The average gain in some retail business could be around 50%, so 75% seems to be a little too much, but they probably know what they are doing...

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 19:24 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

They don't develop neither build that application - they distribute it. That Banshee application wouldn't generate any revenue if it would just languish in source code form on some server.

But this argument starts to resemble something like, "Aren't you happy that your software is popular, developers?!" And then the attitude is that people's primary goal in writing Free Software is for that software to become as popular as possible, regardless of the compromises made in order to achieve that goal. Next up: "We don't like the licence you've used since we can't make a proprietary version of your application which we think would be very popular. Don't you want to be popular?"

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:13 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link] (3 responses)

We collect anonymous statistics and Ubuntu account for the majority of users who opt in. The stats aren't publicly available yet for reasons unknown to me (likely lack of manpower).

The last figures I have put Ubuntu at 73% of all users. Admittedly these are from right after we enabled the feature in the 1.5.4 release and Ubuntu is simply an easier platform for users to experience development releases of Banshee which could bias the number. However since I read every incoming bug report and the same data regarding the underlying system is present in the logs this number does not seem far off.

The vast majority of our users are on Ubuntu using any way of counting them I have available.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:19 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

To be clear.. these stats are from user who purchase from the Amazon store, or is it users of banshee generally?

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:54 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link] (1 responses)

users, we do not collect any data on the Amazon. However every bugreport I recall off hand on the Amazon support has been from an Ubuntu user.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 21:02 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I'll point you to the history of the magnatune revenue in rhythmbox. It can be argued that most rhythmbox users were Ubuntu users in 2008 and yet they only accounted for 1/6 of the purchasing revenue generated from rhythmbox from Magnatunes. A majority of users of the application..but a small fraction of consumers willing to pay for content.

The point being. Usage habits and purchasing habits cannot be assumed to correlated, the magnatune revenue data shows the danger in that. Popularity does not directly equate to purchasing power and it can not be assumed that Ubuntu users of banshee will generated revenue in proportion to their numbers.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 19:47 UTC (Wed) by nlee (guest, #730) [Link] (5 responses)

"The offer on the table was for Canonical to _take_ 75% of the revenue from the Amazon storefront they didn't build in an application they don't help develop."

How about the flip sides? Ubuntu produce a popular platform for people's desktops, this costs them money. Why should Banshee be able to use this platform to generate cash without any contribution back to the provider?

One thing I do not understand is why Banshee turned down 25% of the income from 100% of Banshee users on Ubuntu vs 100% of the income of maybe 5-10% of Banshee users on Ubuntu who know how to turn the Amazon store.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 5:25 UTC (Thu) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link] (2 responses)

Are you suggesting that it's reasonable for platforms to charge developers for the right to be installable?

The platform wouldn't exist without the software. On the other hand Banshee exists on a number of platforms other than Ubuntu

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 20:24 UTC (Thu) by nlee (guest, #730) [Link] (1 responses)

"Are you suggesting that it's reasonable for platforms to charge developers for the right to be installable?"

I'm suggesting that if an application generates "subscription" (*) revenue, why shouldn't the platform providing the chance for the application to generate this income request a share.

As to whether 75/25 is fair is another question - always a chance for Banshee to negotiate.

(*) Including ads or referal income

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 21:43 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

The ability for Banshee to negotiate the X/Y split is an assumption. No one has so far stated that Canonical was willing to negotiate on the terms of the split or that Banshee developers failed to inquire if Canonical was interested in negotiating. The only statement on record that we have is from the Banshee camp that Canonical presented them with 2 options and they chose the option they were most comfortable with.

The statement's so far on record are not written in such a way as to give insight as to whether Canonical was receptive to any efforts to negotiate something other than those 2 options or if any such efforts from Banshee devs were floated. If you can point me to something written from either a Banshee dev or from a Canonical exec that suggests otherwise...please providing me with a reference for me to read over.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 16:52 UTC (Thu) by JEDIDIAH (guest, #14504) [Link] (1 responses)

> Ubuntu produce a popular platform for people's desktops

No they don't.

They PACKAGE a popular platform for people's desktop.

Someone else produces it.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 20:28 UTC (Thu) by nlee (guest, #730) [Link]

"Someone else produces it."

How is your statement different from what Debian does? Or slackware? Or even LFS?

You can't argue that Ubuntu provides no value.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:30 UTC (Wed) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (22 responses)

Clearly this is one of those things that you're allowed to do within the terms of the licence, but you'd have to be quite a bastard to think it's a reasonable way to behave towards people.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:54 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (3 responses)

> Clearly this is one of those things that you're allowed to do within the
> terms of the licence, but you'd have to be quite a bastard to think it's a
> reasonable way to behave towards people.

I happen to think this is reasonable behaviour, simply because it respects the Banshee license. So could you please elaborate why the fact that I have that opinion validates calling me, and others that have a similar opinion, names?

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:41 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Just because something is legal does not mean that it is right.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 23:05 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, that seems generally accepted. (The reverse seems also widely accepted: not everything that is illegal is wrong.)

What I'm puzzled about is that people apparently feel strongly about this situation. I thought it was well established that one may try to earn money with free software that one has not written. More to the point, I don't think there's any (moral) obligation to share the money one does earn that way with those that did write that free software. I'm pretty sure that licenses that add such an obligation (and thus make it a legal obligation) would be considered non-free.

So what exactly is the issue here?

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 18, 2011 17:59 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

So what exactly is the issue here?

Isn't the issue a bit like the situation where you find that the money in the tip jar doesn't go to the people who gave the bulk of the service in a transaction, but to their boss/manager?

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:17 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm pretty sure such behaviour is equally likely from people who were conceived to parents that were married at the moment of conception as it from people who were born out of wedlock. I don't know of any research that would suggest that bastard children have a more difficult time learning how to "play fair" before reaching adulthood.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 22:37 UTC (Wed) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm pretty sure you're using a different definition of bastard.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bastard&...

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 22:43 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

You mean, they killed Kenny?

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 19:44 UTC (Thu) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

rather the 2nd:
1. an illegitimate child
2. usually an insult used by those who aren't creative enough to think up of something like, you're a testicle shitting penguin rapist.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bastard&...

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:54 UTC (Wed) by leomilano (guest, #32220) [Link] (13 responses)

I think, calling honest people who build something as wonderful as Ubuntu "bastards" for not donating more money to another group of honest volunteers is very questionable to say the least, and it reflects on you, rather than Ubuntu/Canonical.

Maybe Mark should have just kept his cash to his ownand live life. Why bother donating huge amounts of money from his pocket to bring freedom of choice to the masses? Of course, he has higher standards.

Can we leave this attitude behind and keep working together to make this world a better place?

Thanks
Leo

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 21:56 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

If Ubuntu was a non-profit and Shuttleworth's expenditures were in fact a donation into such a non-profit, you'd have a valid point. But that's not the situation.

Canonical is not a charity, Ubuntu is not a charity, and the money Shuttleworth is spending to keep Canonical afloat is not a donation. Canonical is a for-profit business entity that manages the wholly subsidiary Ubuntu project. To suggest that the money Shuttleworth has invested into Canonical and into Ubuntu is a donation is to grossly mischaracterize the reality of the situation.

A would daresay that if the structure of relationship between Ubuntu and Canonical were different....more Mozilla-like where the for-profit was a subsidiary of a non-profit... operations and business focus would be better aligned towards a more straight-forwardly stated social benefit and things would be clearer for everyone on how to ethically move towards that goal.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 22:35 UTC (Wed) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (10 responses)

for not donating more money to another group

That isn't the situation; Canonical are taking money earned by application developers and redirecting it into their own pockets. It's not about how much they 'donate' it's about how much they steal.

They didn't do the work that generates this revenue; it's not their money.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 23:11 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (9 responses)

> Canonical are taking money earned by application developers and redirecting it into their own pockets. It's not about how much they 'donate' it's about how much they steal.
>
> They didn't do the work that generates this revenue; it's not their money.

Are we being trolled?

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 0:17 UTC (Thu) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (8 responses)

No. I'm serious; I really do think this is quite appalling behaviour from Canonical.

I'm fine with the idea of distributors making money using Free software, and I'm completely behind the model of giving away the software, but charging for support, since in that case the entity being paid is actually doing the work that's being paid for. I'm fine with the model of distributors offering other services (like music stores) and charging for products sold through them, including the Ubuntu One music store.

However, it seems very wrong to try to take a cut (especially a large majority cut) of a sale where you didn't write the software, didn't supply the product being sold, aren't running the store, and have essentially contributed nothing to the process at all. To do so when it takes revenue away from a non-profit foundation that supports the development that you rely on for your business is beyond the pale.

I'm slightly stunned that anyone actually supports this.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 0:26 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

if they don't contribute anything to the sale at all, then them changing the default should have no effect on anything.

what they contribute is access to the users, and to provide access to the users, the distribution spends a lot of effort making itself attractive to the users.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 5:22 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (6 responses)

I don't think providing the Ubuntu desktop qualifies as "contributing nothing to the process." You can't run banshee on thin air, and few people would run it on Windows. Ubuntu is the enabler for such software for ordinary users. A banshee developer posted elsewhere on this page that the majority of banshee users are Ubuntu users.

And I do suspect you can see all of this and are trolling.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 12:06 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

We're going to go round and round in circles over this...

I don't think providing the Ubuntu desktop qualifies as "contributing nothing to the process." You can't run banshee on thin air, and few people would run it on Windows. Ubuntu is the enabler for such software for ordinary users.

I don't think providing the Debian distribution qualifies as "contributing nothing to the process", either. In fact, there's always been tension between upstream projects and distributions. Sure, if the Banshee or Amarok projects (or whoever) decide that they're going to put in a facility to purchase music through a store that gives them a stream of donations that might fund their work, it's a speculative move on their part, and removing such facilities isn't against the licensing terms, but when distributions start to flex their muscles and override such initiatives, effectively saying "Oh no you don't! If anyone is going to get money from this, it's us!", whilst not providing a replacement stream of funding, then that distribution is cultivating a reputation for freeloading at the expense of the groups that contribute to its success.

A banshee developer posted elsewhere on this page that the majority of banshee users are Ubuntu users.

And someone else pointed out that this doesn't mean that the majority of people buying music and "donating" are Ubuntu users.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 13:28 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (1 responses)

>And I do suspect you can see all of this and are trolling.

*plonk*

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 15:14 UTC (Thu) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]

*plonk*

(not really, but see how offensive that is?)

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 18, 2011 11:31 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (2 responses)

The amount of effort Canonical has to put in packaging Banshee compared to its development (funded mostly by my employer, Novell, btw) - well let's say it is about 1/100.000? So they might be entitled to 1/100.000 of the income Banshee makes for the GNOME Foundation. Let's round it up and give them $1 a year, OK?

Meanwhile, they are a company, building on the efforts of Debian and the volunteers in Ubuntu. That is OK - we all build on the efforts of others. But repaying those others for their efforts by taking away their (*humble*) source of income is just dishonest and might I say *evil*.

Disclaimer: I work for Novell and support Novell's move to give the money to the GNOME Foundation instead of taking it for itself. And I find it ironic that now ANOTHER company, a competitor of us no less, comes in and takes the money WE donate to the GNOME Foundation...

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 20, 2011 19:41 UTC (Sun) by efraim (guest, #65977) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't know how you came to this ratio 1/100.000.

In my view Ubuntu is doing the community a great service, and as such also its parent company Canonical.

Your estimate is extremely arrogant - it's like those developers who claim they are the only one doing anything useful and all those managers and, oh, salespersons are not needed.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Mar 13, 2011 20:55 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

Banshee was already packaged on Ubuntu, for Canonical NOTHING changes. They just do what they should do - pick the best software and ship that to their users. They do their frickin' job as distro, just like all others. They should thank the Banshee developers for creating something so cool they ship it as default! Instead of taking their (little!) income away...

Banshee has many developers working on it, Canonical needs one guy 1 hour per month to get it packaged. Pretty sure my 1/100.000 is not far off.

The other stuff Canonical does like marketing and other blabla is useful - for them. Not for Banshee. If Canonical didn't exist, other distro's would ship their apps and they don't take 75%, not even the company that developed Banshee (Novell) does that in their SUSE or in openSUSE.

But let's be friendly and say Canonical has contributed to Banshee by bringing it to users - that effort is worth 75%? That is way more insulting that saying their effort is worth 1/100.000, frankly.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 22:15 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

"Can we leave this attitude behind and keep working together to make this world a better place?"

Well, here's the rub - there's a question whether this constitutes "working together" or not. One group produces software for a platform with a feature for raising money, and says "I want the money to go back to the platform." Then a downstream project that also uses that platform says "well, no - that competes with us making money, so either give us a 3/4 cut of the proceeds, or we'll hide your thing so ours is the default."

I'm not entirely sure that constitutes "working together."

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:31 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link] (9 responses)

As a Banshee developer I feel that Canonical have always acted with considerable fairness in matters that involve our community. They were in their full rights to simply change the default, instead they engaged the community with their concerns and suggested some reasonable options.

We do not in any way feel blackmailed, it is a non-controversy.

As for the default, I will be happy to provide exact instructions (via OMG Ubuntu) on launch day for how to enable this and many of our other fine features.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:38 UTC (Wed) by loevborg (guest, #51779) [Link]

Thanks for putting this in context.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:54 UTC (Wed) by jmrllc (guest, #61624) [Link] (7 responses)

Respectfully Lovechild, do you speak for the majority of Banshee developers. If so that is great that you all feel good about the decision. Ubuntu is getting a reputation of not listening to users though not to mention I liked the idea of proceeds supporting Gnome. I appreciate the need for Canonical to make money but I feel they are grasping for straws to find a long term profitable business model where they back a distro and make money around its apps and services. I think they are trying to mimic Apple a bit to much. Granted Mark's comments about the Mac OS or Apple in general being the goal show through more and more but let's just hope people want a free software attempt to mimic Apple. I know there are many Linux users that have been around since Linux was a prompt on a black screen but as a late Linux bloomer I don't enjoy watching free software used and abused by people looking for a business model. It is much more then that and in the future the countless failures at poaching money from free software will only stand as evidence that some things are not meant for profit. We move forward by bringing original ideas and innovation to the ecosystem as a whole but as soon as you get investors involved they obviously have a bottom line that no longer can possibly line up with the community's best interest. When the smoke clears maybe this will all make more sense to us all but we'll see.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 19:59 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link] (6 responses)

If you prefer it, here is Bertrand Lorentz saying the same thing.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/02/banshee-to-ship-with-u...

Really we are cool with this and I don't know of anyone who was the slightest bit offended by either option. Nor for that matter am I aware of any journalist who contacted the project or our lead developers before being offended on our behalf and condemning Canonical for their conduct.

It all feels blown way out of proportion.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:19 UTC (Wed) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (5 responses)

I don't recall being "offended on your behalf," I'm offended on my own behalf - thanks.

When I was still with Novell, I was asked about whether we should earmark the monies for GNOME and I was in full support of that rather than having an "every project/company for itself" type of attitude and trying to grab the profits for Novell.

Banshee is the app du jour on this issue, but it's not the first nor last. It's a crappy policy, in my opinion, for a provider like Canonical to insert itself into a affiliate program - and take the lion share of the cut - for an application that has largely been developed on other people's dime or other people's time. Doubly so when the monies are earmarked for a non-profit that provides much of the software that forms the foundation of Canonical's business.

If you feel OK with it, then that's your call - but I really don't think it's reasonable. Further - it at the least deserves attention so that Canonical's user base and contributor community is aware of the situation. Other developers who might be thinking about doing something similar may think twice before bothering if downstream projects like Ubuntu are simply going to override the default.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:32 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Assuming Canonical's approach to revenue sharing with Banshee is typical of how they approach ISV's with regard to revenue sharing generally..this is not a good sign for their pay-to-place partner repository effort associated with their software center to turn Ubuntu into a platform. Any ISV that wants to sustain their own development of their application with micropayments or subscription revenue from Ubuntu users is going to be hardpressed to find terms such as 75% revenue to Canonical a workable revenue-sharing relationship. That's a really big problem. I don't see how Canonical's Software Center will turn into a vibrant AppStore-like marketplace with such heavy taxation in place for ISVs. It's crippling business model.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 21:07 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (3 responses)

http://gburt.blogspot.com/2011/02/banshee-supporting-gnom...

Shuttleworth speakth:
"the 75% share is consistent with the relationship we have with Mozilla."

So this is self-consistent behaviour from Canonical and not a Banshee specific engagement. I just don't see how Canonical is going to sustain a robust ISV marketplace with a 75% revenue taxation rate.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 21:17 UTC (Wed) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (2 responses)

And people think Apple's "we'll take our 30% on everything you do for allowing you to be on our platform" position is offensive.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 23:17 UTC (Wed) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link] (1 responses)

> And people think Apple's "we'll take our 30% on everything you do for allowing you to be on our platform" position is offensive.

They're hardly comparable figures. The 30% is the proportion of the song price that Apple takes. The 75% is a proportion of the affiliate kickback, which will be some fraction of what Amazon takes of the song price. Assuming Amazon takes the same proportion of the song price as Apple does, and that they kick a third of it back to the affiliate (both fairly generous assumptions), the total affiliate kickback would be about 10% of song price, and Canonical's take 7.5% of song price.

(Note: Obviously, this does not affect the substance of the debate on what a fair Canonical/Gnome split would be in the least; all I'm criticising is the 75% to Apple's 30% comparison.)

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 23:43 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Apple's new 30% policy is not about music...its being applied for all apps that have a subscription or content based delivery model.

http://www.technewsdaily.com/apple-wants-30-of-subscripti...

Including ebooks purchased from vendors like Amazon:
http://gigaom.com/apple/apple-wants-in-on-digital-book-pu...

And furthermore it appears that Google is looking for a 10% revenue cut for app developers who want to sign up subscribers via its Google One Pass offering to app developers.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9209861/Rhapsody_b...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/...

The question isn't whether a platform entity like Apple or Google or Canonical should get revenue from app developers. They should. The question is what sort of cut is reasonable and fair. If 10% is being accepted as fair and 30% is being pointed to as unsustainable..then logic holds that a 75% stake of any revenue stream is pure crazy and full of fail.

If Canonical is intent on making a 75% revenue split their standing policy when working with any ISV and any retailer...they are going to fail at generating interest in their platform from such vendors.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:30 UTC (Wed) by orev (guest, #50902) [Link] (1 responses)

It's interesting that they chose the "give no one anything" option, given that having the default music player with the store enabled would likely have given GNOME much more revenue, even at only 25%, than relying on people to know how to activate the store manually. Defaults are king.

Numerous studies have shown that primates will choose to screw over both parties when the other party is perceived as acting unfairly, even though in the end it hurts both of them. This situation sounds like a perfect example of this in action.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:57 UTC (Wed) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link]

Of course, there is a reason for that behaviour - while it may hurt in the specific instance, it discourages people from attempting this sort of shake-down in general.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:55 UTC (Wed) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (17 responses)

Here's what bothers me about this situation. On their own, decisions about redirecting Firefox's monetized search referral system, or rhythmbox's monetized amazon referral system, or Banshee's, are individually somewhat understandable. But taken as a whole, this paints a really worrying picture.

Canonical are not the only game in town, and they do practically no application development. They're a platform business. But by turning off these features within applications, they're essentially saying "your business model will not be supported via our platform" to those developers that have software features which generate revenue.

The free software world is already desperately low on commercially sustainable free software applications. The ones which have proven to be sustainable - the likes of Firefox (whose revenue stream Canonical also impinge on) for example - essentially make their money via Windows users.

Canonical are free to set the monetary value of their platform at $0. That's their commitment, no one forced them to do that. But it's exceptionally sad to see them basically depressing the wider free software market by turning off features like these, and preventing developers earning revenue from software features.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 16, 2011 23:23 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (9 responses)

> But it's exceptionally sad to see them basically depressing the wider free software market by turning off features like these, and preventing developers earning revenue from software features.

Well, if those developers are in it for the money, and their plan is to earn that money with features like the ones discussed here, then one day they may find themselves forced to come up with other ways to earn money with their free software.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 7:54 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (8 responses)

Yes. That is precisely my point. Don't you see that's going to end up driving people away from free software?

A distributor has a *special role* in the community. Most of these apps you would never install third-party. Are we really saying that it's ok for them to both give the app away for no cost *and* to remove [the vast majority of] any other revenue stream which might accrue to the original authors?

Whether or not Banshee are ok with it is almost beside the point. Why on earth are people going to think about releasing software into a system where basically every effort is put in by the distributor to stop them earning from it?

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 9:40 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (7 responses)

> Are we really saying that it's ok for them to both give the app away for no cost *and* to remove [the vast majority of] any other revenue stream which might accrue to the original authors?

Mark Pilgrim at http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point :

> If others profiting from my work is something you seek to avoid, then Free Software is not for you.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 10:00 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (5 responses)

Is it ok for other people to generate profit from free software? Of course it is, legally and morally. That's not the problem here.

Is it ok for other people to cannibalise your revenue stream from that free software? Legally yes, morally - well, that's what this entire discussion is about.

There's one obvious result from this type of behaviour, and it's that authors who write this software will no longer make the whole thing available as free software.

And let's be clear here. We're talking about a revenue stream which has generated ~$3.5k for a *non-profit*. And a multi-million dollar private corporation has diverted that.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 18, 2011 11:40 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (4 responses)

More interesting, makes you wonder how it makes Novell feel. They pay for most of Banshee's development. They decided to give the income to the GNOME Foundation. And now another company, a competitor no less, is taking that money for itself. Now that must be very motivating for Novell to put in more money in Banshee development, yes?

Actually I would argue that it constitutes a good reason to stop developing it altogether... Put the money somewhere it actually helps Novell and not just a competitor...

(note that I work for Novell and are completely not involved in anything Banshee)

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 18, 2011 12:14 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

Banshee is MIT-licensed free software. If Novell does not want people to adopt its software and change it, they should not publish it as free software in the first place. (Actually, Banshee isn't a »Novell product« in the sense that some PHB at Novell went to their developers and told them to write a new music player – Novell just funds a bunch of free-software developers who had the music player already –, so it probably isn't up to some PHB at Novell to determine its licensing, but that is neither here nor there.) For all we know, Microsoft could take up Banshee, make it the official audio player in Windows 8, and change the music store setup such that all the revenue goes to Microsoft – and there is precisely nothing Novell could do about it.

One might argue that it is unfair for Canonical to point their version of Banshee to their own music store, but it makes sense for them and does not conflict with Banshee's license. (Even the Banshee developers don't really seem to mind.) On the other hand, under the present arrangement every Ubuntu system out there – and there are rather a lot of them – comes with a copy of Banshee rather than some other music player, so Banshee gets a lot of exposure that it otherwise might not have had. Given that the object of Banshee development is presumably not to make money for the GNOME foundation, but to produce a cool and popular music player and keep its developers entertained in the process, this may not be a bad thing. (And if, as you suggest, Novell is so disgusted with the affair to stop funding further Banshee development, it would probably make sense for Canonical to step in.)

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 18, 2011 16:27 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (2 responses)

I wouldn't argue it is illegal for Canonical to do this. And they have every right to try and make money. I do say it is unfair (and I am being very polite right now) to do that by actively taking away the money making capabilities of their upstream (charitable) projects for their own commercial gain.

You argue that the fact they distribute Banshee and in their infinite wisdom have chosen it to be default is plenty to morally entitle them to this income over the Banshee developers. I call bullshit. In no way are they doing this as a favor to Banshee - their users want a good media player, Banshee has developed one, so they ship it. Apple ships apps via the appstore, they do about as much work on 'packaging' and testing as Canonical - probably even more. And their developers are upset about a 30% cut they take off the sales. Now you say 75% is reasonable for Canonical to take off of Firefox and Banshee income?

The relationship between up-and downstream is symbiotic and should go both ways. Distro's should contribute to downstream, it is their life blood. Novell, Red Hat - they do it. Canonical - not only does it contribute little, it actively is taking away resources for downstream. Money that is used to fund hackfests, meetings and more - don't think this money doesn't matter to Banshee or GNOME! This move is bad for the ecosystem and sets a dangerous precedent.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 18, 2011 16:48 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Remember that we're only talking about the default setting here. People who feel strongly that the kickback should go to GNOME are perfectly free to reset the music store setting to whatever Banshee puts in to begin with.

I think it is quite legitimate for Canonical to distribute Banshee just because they are interested in supplying a good music player with Ubuntu. Giving exposure to Banshee is a collateral effect albeit a nice one for the Banshee developers (even though the money issue leaves out the GNOME foundation). Canonical could certainly find another music player and hack that to access their music store if Banshee wasn't available.

As far as the 30% cut that Apple takes is concerned, if it was really that upsetting to developers then no one would develop for the iPhone and it would die. The iPhone app developers may bitch and moan but in the end they still seem to be happy to get to keep their 70% or they wouldn't bother. I'm not saying Canonical's 75% is reasonable – I'm saying that, with a freely licensed piece of software such as Banshee, Canonical are well within their rights to set their defaults up any way they please. (Distributions do it all the time with web browsers.) No one is forced to (a) use Ubuntu, (b) use Banshee, (c) get their MP3 files from wherever either Canonical or the Banshee developers say they should get them from. I use neither Ubuntu nor Banshee nor do I buy MP3 files from either of the outlets in question, so I personally don't have a horse in this race.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 18, 2011 17:32 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Please, let's keep the easy offtopic punches about any particular entity's level of _overall_ contribution out of it. Throwing in the sidebar comment in your last paragraph like that is only going to serve to have people tune out this discussion who need to hear the message about ecosystem sustainable revenue distribution.

I promise you, there will be a time and a place to bring up that up again and again and again. But right now the underlying issue here as to fair, sustainable,ethical distribution of revenue between non-profit and for-profit entities in the distributed developed software ecosystem is actually really important for the health of the entire ecosystem moving forward.

-jef

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 11:08 UTC (Thu) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link]

The problem isn't Canonical making money. The problem is them sabotaging Banshee's efforts to make money for the Gnome Foundation.

Application Development is not the whole story.

Posted Feb 17, 2011 11:29 UTC (Thu) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] (6 responses)

I've noticed something of a negative vibe towards Ubuntu/Canonical in the comments of LWN, one example is the criticism that they don't do any application development.

This may be true but misses the point. If Ubuntu actually did nothing then the user experience between Fedora and Ubuntu would be identical. It isn't. All the work that Ubuntu does on the user experience has real value and costs real money to do.

I'm not sure therefore why application development is more important (and more worthy of a revenue stream) than polishing the user experience.

Application Development is not the whole story.

Posted Feb 17, 2011 12:10 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

"I'm not sure therefore why application development is more important (and more worthy of a revenue stream) than polishing the user experience."

Application development is what led to affiliate revenues.

If you are Novell and you developed Banshee and decided explicitly that the revenue from affiliate deals should go to GNOME Foundation, a non-profit entity instead of a commercial vendor, would you regret that decision now? Something to consider.

Application Development is not the whole story.

Posted Feb 17, 2011 21:05 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you are Novell and you developed Banshee and decided explicitly that the revenue from affiliate deals should go to GNOME Foundation, a non-profit entity instead of a commercial vendor, would you regret that decision now?

Why should you? That people using and/or redistributing the free software you wrote, decide differently shouldn't bother you at all. By doing that those people stay well within the boundaries set by, well, the core principles of free software. You should not develop free software if you are uncomfortable with that.

(Please note that, as far as I know, the Banshee developers actually do seem to be comfortable with the decisions discussed here).

Application Development is not the whole story.

Posted Feb 17, 2011 22:09 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

"Why should you? That people using and/or redistributing the free software you wrote, decide differently shouldn't bother you at all."

It's cool if you feel that way, but not so cool that you suggest how others "should" feel about something. Obviously, a number of people feel that it's not right for other players to override the affiliate codes for their own gain.

Just because licenses allow a certain type of behavior, it doesn't mean that the community or developers condone it or have to shrug and accept it.

"(Please note that, as far as I know, the Banshee developers actually do seem to be comfortable with the decisions discussed here)."

I've had two Banshee developers indicate that they were in favor of the story, so... there may be a lot of daylight between being "OK" with the decision enough not to raise a complaint and actually being "comfortable" with it.

Application Development is not the whole story.

Posted Feb 17, 2011 23:53 UTC (Thu) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link]

"Application development is what led to affiliate revenues"

Well yes but there wouldn't be an affiliate revenues if the application didn't have a distribution to umm distribute it. This is the old chicken and egg argument :-)

I think if you explicitly decided anything about affiliate revenues from your software you haven't read the license you are releasing it under.

Whether Novell regrets taking a particular course of action rather depends on why they did it - which I have absolutely zero information about.

Application Development is not the whole story.

Posted Feb 17, 2011 12:25 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link] (1 responses)

My point isn't that Canonical should be doing app development or that they shouldn't be earning money from Ubuntu.

My point is that if Canonical start diverting revenue from their upstream projects, not only does that put them into a position of competing with a community they should be collaborating with, it's also a poor signal to send out to people who might want to develop apps, have them available in Ubuntu, and (shock) want to earn money off them.

This is the issue. This type of behaviour pits Canonical against other members of the community, and effectively puts them into competition with their upstreams. Rather than enlarging the market and creating value, they're attempting to grab share and destroying value. This simply is not a healthy situation.

Application Development is not the whole story.

Posted Feb 17, 2011 19:23 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

"My point is that if Canonical start diverting revenue from their upstream projects, not only does that put them into a position of competing with a community they should be collaborating with, it's also a poor signal to send out to people who might want to develop apps, have them available in Ubuntu, and (shock) want to earn money off them."

Exactly.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 1:31 UTC (Thu) by jason.warner (guest, #72958) [Link] (4 responses)

I posted this on the original article comment thread, and wanted to repost here for completeness.

"Hi Everyone -

My name is Jason Warner and I'm the new Ubuntu desktop manager at Canonical. While I wasn't party to the particular discussions, I thought I would jump in and give my thoughts. It might be hard to field any follow-ups via a comment section so if anyone wants to comment off-line, feel free to email me at jason.warner@canonical.com.

Others in the thread touched on many of the points, so bear with me if there is some repetition.

Revenue sharing deals are common in software and Canonical has a history of cordially participating in mutually beneficial relationships with upstreams. While some may not like the exact parameters of the relationship, those parameters are really between Canonical and the various partners. Just like any relationship, there will be give and take and as long as everyone maturely approaches the situation, mutually beneficial arrangements usually evolve.

Canonical has always had the business model of selling services in and around Ubuntu, and this was an example where a win/win situation could be created with the upstream. This was the driving force behind the discussions with the Banshee team. Based on response from the Banshee team on multiple accounts across different sites, it seems me they feel that Canonical approached them in good faith, and there was no hard feelings between the actual parties involved.

Again, if anyone wants to comment off-line, please do email me at jason.warner@canonical.com. "

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 4:07 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (3 responses)

I'll post my response from NWW here as well:

Forgive me if I'm misreading this, but it sounds a lot like "hey, this is a deal between Banshee and Canonical so you don't have any business butting in."

I'm hoping that was not how it was meant, but if it was... you're dead wrong. Canonical has spent quite a lot of time and money trying to convince the larger community to help it build Ubuntu. With that comes transparency and accountability, or it should. Banshee is a community project, and this involves funds that were earmarked for a non-profit that benefits Canonical - so it very well should be discussed in public and not just "between the parties."

The resolution was posted on the Banshee Project's blog (as it should be) and it's something that the wider community needs to understand because it potentially affects any project that might want to do something similar to Banshee in terms of an affiliate deal with Amazon or any other company.

It's also something that Canonical's users might want to know where funds go when they use Firefox or Banshee to make a purchase through Amazon or any other affiliate.

Finally, it's something that other companies in the same space need to understand. A significant portion of Banshee's development was sponsored by a competing company that decided to forgo revenue from this affiliate relationship in favor of putting it towards GNOME. Other companies in the same space as Canonical need to understand that Canonical will not respect those affiliate deals when they have an opportunity to put their hand in the cookie jar.

Funds ear-marked for a non-profit

Posted Feb 17, 2011 13:28 UTC (Thu) by sladen (guest, #27402) [Link] (2 responses)

Zonker: much as I am reticent to inject mere facts into the discussion:

foundation.gnome.org/finance/ of which the most recent I can see is:
foundation.gnome.org/finance/GNOME2009-budget-with-actuals.ods

There are three donors listed above the $20,000-mark. Google, Intel and some outfit in based in the Isle-of-Man.

Funds ear-marked for a non-profit

Posted Feb 17, 2011 13:36 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (1 responses)

If you read the original article, I did give Canonical credit for being a GNOME sponsor. (The budget doesn't quite concur with what I remember Novell spending on GNOME-related activities, but that's another story.)

The hand that refills the cookie jar / New events box host

Posted Feb 19, 2011 12:25 UTC (Sat) by sladen (guest, #27402) [Link]

It was more about the "hand in the cookie jar" implication... if the hand is indeed there, it is perhaps because that hand is refilling the GNOME cookie jar! It certainly looks that way with a figure of 75% out (if that is indeed the case) that magically puts 2002,000% back in!

A lot of people end up reading an article; and many other articles get written as a result. That's a massive reach and the number of comments here reflects that. At the moment the (new) (replacement) GNOME European Events box could benefit from a new homethe former was graciously hosted by Openismus GmbH in Berlin for many years.

Perhaps you could spread the message in your next piece? It would positively contribute to GNOME and ultimately sharing the workload. Not everything need be about monetary contributions, most frequently it is the time and space that a person or company can volunteer or contributethis is just such an opportunity to back GNOME and it would be useful if you could spread the message.

Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

Posted Feb 17, 2011 14:37 UTC (Thu) by wertigon (guest, #42963) [Link]

My biggest gripe with this is that Banshee is based upon Mono, which seems like a patent minefield right now.

This makes me severely consider switching to Fedora, and I've been using Debian since 3.0 and switched to Ubuntu once Warty came out.