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

Posted Feb 16, 2011 20:54 UTC (Wed) by leomilano (guest, #32220)
In reply to: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) by ewan
Parent article: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

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

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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."