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

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

Posted Feb 16, 2011 18:18 UTC (Wed) by njs (guest, #40338)
In reply to: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) by jspaleta
Parent article: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)

> 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.


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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]

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 (guest, #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? ;-)

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