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

Posted Feb 16, 2011 17:31 UTC (Wed) by Lovechild (guest, #3592)
Parent article: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

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 18:54 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