Canonical / Banshee / Gnome Drama

http://www.networkworld.com/community/canonical-alters-banshee-agreement


What do you guys think about this situation?
lemme know


cheers

Hmm not sure what to truly make of this, at first glance it seems like Canonical is being a tad greedy or like something..dare I say it.. Apple-like *shudders*

But I'll leave the business/financial side of it to the brighter ones here on that. All I can say is I'm also glad I never touch Mono and always choose a Mono free piece of software, it's not like I need it anyway (I know that's not really the issue here).

I just can't see how this could be viewed as anything but bad. I don't think that Canonical should use ubuntu's position as probably the most popular distro to arm twist other developers in order to leverage funding. I also am left wondering if this is a way of slapping the gnome foundation. By default due to ubuntu's popularity I am assuming that most gnome users will be using unity and not gnomeshell. This coupled with the financial setback the proposed deal would bring could really be a crushing blow on what seems to be a somewhat languishing project. I'm not saying there is no development, but people are visual and they would respond more to gnomeshell than they would to 10,000 bug fixes under the hood. It's seems a pretty widespread notion that many users will be switching to xfce or KDE so I am somewhat uncertain about the future of Gnome.

Either way, I find these sort of strong arm tactics by Canonical worrying. How long before they try to do this with other applications. Remember the search engine switch to yahoo and then the back flip? Will Canonical instigate bidding wars by developers to get their application included?

It could get ugly.

Didn't the article say that Canonical would give 25% to the gnome foundation?

Heres a good question - Why would Banshee developers agree to their program being default in Ubuntu knowing that Canonical already have the Ubuntu One store? They should have formally agreed with Canonical about who would get what on the funding.

I don't like that Canonical changed the way profits from Amazon store are portioned out.
But my view is Canonical need more revenue, they can't keep relying on funding from Mark Shuttleworth.

But the politically correct method would have been for Canonical to stick with Rhythmbox, then we wouldn't be in this mess.

GNOME are still going to gain out of it with Banshee stores being there by default on the most popular Linux distro... Just not as much as some people would have liked.

I've spotted one problem with Amazon store, theres no way for UK users to get Nectar points for money spent on there. http://www.nectar.com/collect-online/retailer/amazon.points
It relies on some cookie info from when you log into Nectar, then click their link to Amazon.

hhmmmmm well......

Canonical or any other Distro don't "need" approval to include Banshee as their default player..... it is opensource, you can do what you like..... Technically Canonical could of said nothing and just made the changes without prior warning which I guess would be a really shitty thing to do.... But I think its also pretty shitty to redirect 75% of the profits made from the amazon music store to Canonical. Fair enough they have reached a new agreement now where they include Ubuntu one music store and the amazon music store and Gnome get 25% from amazon and 25% from ubuntu one..... I am not sure if this is a good deal or not.... Gnome may profit even more from this deal.... or maybe not. I don't know yet....

I understand Ubuntu has to be self reliant in the future and fund itself through services/donations etc.... But In a Perfect World Canonical should of either stuck to Rhytmbox who have no prior ties to donate to any foundations... and stuck with Ubuntu one on that, or used or developed a different music player..... Why Banshee? what is so good about it? It's not any better than Rhythmbox (in my opinion) but I do like the look of banshee better.

but anyways.... Maybe gnome will benefit more this way..... or maybe it won't... either way, what's done is done. It sure as hell caused a ShitStorm in the community though ahahahahahah.

Doesn't everything?

Quite right no approval should be needed to include any particular FOSS program in a distro.
But in the case of media players with stores (or indeed any other app with a store) I see it as more of a grey area.

Its almost as if it would have been better as a FOSS player with a Propitiatory store. Then again that would annoy people...


Doesn't Banshee play videos as well?
Beyond that I don't know what the difference between the two players is on features.

I have heard that banshee can play video.... I think it was a fairly recent feature that was added.....
correct me if I am wrong anybody.... I use to use banshee when I was using gnome but I am quite happy using Good ol Amarok now

kaddy wrote:I have heard that banshee can play video.... I think it was a fairly recent feature that was added.....
correct me if I am wrong anybody.... I use to use banshee when I was using gnome but I am quite happy using Good ol Amarok now

I have the latest build on Ubuntu 10.04 from the Banshee PPA, I just tried it, and yeah, it plays videos. I had no idea until I tried it just now.