The Ubuntu One music store and free software for profit

Recently, Amarok hacker Jeff Mitchell went to the openSUSE community to ask them how they felt about the UOMS. In particular, he would like to know how openSUSE might react if Canonical were to push its Rhythmbox changes back upstream - which has not yet happened, as of this writing. Would openSUSE be willing to ship a Rhythmbox plugin which existed for the purpose of funding another distributor? How, asked Jeff, do we feel about free software which is designed to make money for others?

To an extent, this question has been answered for years: both Rhythmbox and Amarok include support for Magnatune's music store, and distributors have shipped that support. This plugin generates income - a significant amount, evidently - for Magnatune, which kicks a portion back to Rhythmbox and Amarok. So simply operating a for-profit music store is not, itself, reason for concern or for exclusion from free music player applications. The Ubuntu music store appears to be looked at differently, though, for a couple of reasons, one of which may hold more water than the other.

Jeff described the rules which music stores like Magnatune must meet for inclusion in Amarok:

It is not clear what sort of preview capability will be included in the UOMS. It would appear, from Ubuntu's documentation, that tracks can be downloaded up to three times, so redownloads are indeed possible "at any time," but up to a limit. Where things will really fall down, though, is the requirement for free formats; the Ubuntu store looks to be MP3-only (the occasional track in Windows media format is unlikely to make anybody feel any better). So the simple act of playing tracks from the UOMS on an Ubuntu system will require the installation of codecs which have potential patent problems or which are not free software.

That requirement is not, needless to say, encouraging the wider use of free audio formats. Perhaps this is a place where Canonical could have tried to push things in the right direction by insisting on the right to sell tracks in free (and preferably lossless) formats. Perhaps Canonical did try and failed; if so, that's not something which has been communicated to the rest of the world.

The other complaint, again as expressed by Jeff, is this:

In other words, does it make sense for one distribution to ship code which exists for the purpose of earning money for somebody else?

Again, the precedent is fairly clear: the Firefox browser has been an reliable money-making tool for the Mozilla project, and Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit entity (though the Mozilla Foundation is not). Many drivers contributed to the kernel are put there by for-profit corporations which clearly hope to see that code spur sales of their products. Gstreamer has an array of commercial offerings designed to plug into it. And so on. Free software may be free-as-in-beer, but the profit motive is often not that far away.

It is tempting to say that the real complaint here is that, if this support were to be shipped outside of Ubuntu, the beneficiary would be Canonical in particular. The truth of the matter, though, is that a music store designed to benefit any other distribution-owning corporation would likely raise eyebrows as well. But it is not clear that this is right; there is nothing inherently wrong with generating money for companies which are making free software.

Free software licenses are not allowed to discriminate between different fields of use. Freedom means that users can use the code to do something its developers might find unpleasant - or worse. That does not mean, though, that distributors have to ship software aimed at any purpose. In the past, programs like hot babe and gnaughty have run into opposition at distributors. So, if distributors were to decide that selling MP3 files to users violates their standards of decency, there would be precedents for keeping the code out.

On the other hand, explicitly patching out a music player plugin to prevent users from spending money with another distributor might be seen as petty, at best.

So far, the situation is hypothetical; Canonical has not yet tried to push this code upstream, and nobody is expecting other distributors to fish this patch out of the Ubuntu source packages. It would not be surprising if this kind if situation were to arise at some point, though; indeed, it would be surprising if it doesn't. So it makes sense to have this discussion now; that way, the people involved may have some idea of what they want to do when a real decision must be made.