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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 20:55 UTC (Wed) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828)Parent article: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)
Here's what bothers me about this situation. On their own, decisions about redirecting Firefox's monetized search referral system, or rhythmbox's monetized amazon referral system, or Banshee's, are individually somewhat understandable. But taken as a whole, this paints a really worrying picture.
Canonical are not the only game in town, and they do practically no application development. They're a platform business. But by turning off these features within applications, they're essentially saying "your business model will not be supported via our platform" to those developers that have software features which generate revenue.
The free software world is already desperately low on commercially sustainable free software applications. The ones which have proven to be sustainable - the likes of Firefox (whose revenue stream Canonical also impinge on) for example - essentially make their money via Windows users.
Canonical are free to set the monetary value of their platform at $0. That's their commitment, no one forced them to do that. But it's exceptionally sad to see them basically depressing the wider free software market by turning off features like these, and preventing developers earning revenue from software features.
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Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 16, 2011 23:23 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
> But it's exceptionally sad to see them basically depressing the wider free software market by turning off features like these, and preventing developers earning revenue from software features.
Well, if those developers are in it for the money, and their plan is to earn that money with features like the ones discussed here, then one day they may find themselves forced to come up with other ways to earn money with their free software.
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 17, 2011 7:54 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828) [Link]
Yes. That is precisely my point. Don't you see that's going to end up driving people away from free software?
A distributor has a *special role* in the community. Most of these apps you would never install third-party. Are we really saying that it's ok for them to both give the app away for no cost *and* to remove [the vast majority of] any other revenue stream which might accrue to the original authors?
Whether or not Banshee are ok with it is almost beside the point. Why on earth are people going to think about releasing software into a system where basically every effort is put in by the distributor to stop them earning from it?
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 17, 2011 9:40 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
> Are we really saying that it's ok for them to both give the app away for no cost *and* to remove [the vast majority of] any other revenue stream which might accrue to the original authors?
Mark Pilgrim at http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point :
> If others profiting from my work is something you seek to avoid, then Free Software is not for you.
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 17, 2011 10:00 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828) [Link]
Is it ok for other people to generate profit from free software? Of course it is, legally and morally. That's not the problem here.
Is it ok for other people to cannibalise your revenue stream from that free software? Legally yes, morally - well, that's what this entire discussion is about.
There's one obvious result from this type of behaviour, and it's that authors who write this software will no longer make the whole thing available as free software.
And let's be clear here. We're talking about a revenue stream which has generated ~$3.5k for a *non-profit*. And a multi-million dollar private corporation has diverted that.
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 18, 2011 11:40 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
More interesting, makes you wonder how it makes Novell feel. They pay for most of Banshee's development. They decided to give the income to the GNOME Foundation. And now another company, a competitor no less, is taking that money for itself. Now that must be very motivating for Novell to put in more money in Banshee development, yes?
Actually I would argue that it constitutes a good reason to stop developing it altogether... Put the money somewhere it actually helps Novell and not just a competitor...
(note that I work for Novell and are completely not involved in anything Banshee)
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 18, 2011 12:14 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Banshee is MIT-licensed free software. If Novell does not want people to adopt its software and change it, they should not publish it as free software in the first place. (Actually, Banshee isn't a »Novell product« in the sense that some PHB at Novell went to their developers and told them to write a new music player – Novell just funds a bunch of free-software developers who had the music player already –, so it probably isn't up to some PHB at Novell to determine its licensing, but that is neither here nor there.) For all we know, Microsoft could take up Banshee, make it the official audio player in Windows 8, and change the music store setup such that all the revenue goes to Microsoft – and there is precisely nothing Novell could do about it. One might argue that it is unfair for Canonical to point their version of Banshee to their own music store, but it makes sense for them and does not conflict with Banshee's license. (Even the Banshee developers don't really seem to mind.) On the other hand, under the present arrangement every Ubuntu system out there – and there are rather a lot of them – comes with a copy of Banshee rather than some other music player, so Banshee gets a lot of exposure that it otherwise might not have had. Given that the object of Banshee development is presumably not to make money for the GNOME foundation, but to produce a cool and popular music player and keep its developers entertained in the process, this may not be a bad thing. (And if, as you suggest, Novell is so disgusted with the affair to stop funding further Banshee development, it would probably make sense for Canonical to step in.)
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 18, 2011 16:27 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
I wouldn't argue it is illegal for Canonical to do this. And they have every right to try and make money. I do say it is unfair (and I am being very polite right now) to do that by actively taking away the money making capabilities of their upstream (charitable) projects for their own commercial gain.
You argue that the fact they distribute Banshee and in their infinite wisdom have chosen it to be default is plenty to morally entitle them to this income over the Banshee developers. I call bullshit. In no way are they doing this as a favor to Banshee - their users want a good media player, Banshee has developed one, so they ship it. Apple ships apps via the appstore, they do about as much work on 'packaging' and testing as Canonical - probably even more. And their developers are upset about a 30% cut they take off the sales. Now you say 75% is reasonable for Canonical to take off of Firefox and Banshee income?
The relationship between up-and downstream is symbiotic and should go both ways. Distro's should contribute to downstream, it is their life blood. Novell, Red Hat - they do it. Canonical - not only does it contribute little, it actively is taking away resources for downstream. Money that is used to fund hackfests, meetings and more - don't think this money doesn't matter to Banshee or GNOME! This move is bad for the ecosystem and sets a dangerous precedent.
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 18, 2011 16:48 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Remember that we're only talking about the default setting here. People who feel strongly that the kickback should go to GNOME are perfectly free to reset the music store setting to whatever Banshee puts in to begin with. I think it is quite legitimate for Canonical to distribute Banshee just because they are interested in supplying a good music player with Ubuntu. Giving exposure to Banshee is a collateral effect albeit a nice one for the Banshee developers (even though the money issue leaves out the GNOME foundation). Canonical could certainly find another music player and hack that to access their music store if Banshee wasn't available. As far as the 30% cut that Apple takes is concerned, if it was really that upsetting to developers then no one would develop for the iPhone and it would die. The iPhone app developers may bitch and moan but in the end they still seem to be happy to get to keep their 70% or they wouldn't bother. I'm not saying Canonical's 75% is reasonable – I'm saying that, with a freely licensed piece of software such as Banshee, Canonical are well within their rights to set their defaults up any way they please. (Distributions do it all the time with web browsers.) No one is forced to (a) use Ubuntu, (b) use Banshee, (c) get their MP3 files from wherever either Canonical or the Banshee developers say they should get them from. I use neither Ubuntu nor Banshee nor do I buy MP3 files from either of the outlets in question, so I personally don't have a horse in this race.
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 18, 2011 17:32 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Please, let's keep the easy offtopic punches about any particular entity's level of _overall_ contribution out of it. Throwing in the sidebar comment in your last paragraph like that is only going to serve to have people tune out this discussion who need to hear the message about ecosystem sustainable revenue distribution.
I promise you, there will be a time and a place to bring up that up again and again and again. But right now the underlying issue here as to fair, sustainable,ethical distribution of revenue between non-profit and for-profit entities in the distributed developed software ecosystem is actually really important for the health of the entire ecosystem moving forward.
-jef
Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) Posted Feb 17, 2011 11:08 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
The problem isn't Canonical making money. The problem is them sabotaging Banshee's efforts to make money for the Gnome Foundation.
Application Development is not the whole story. Posted Feb 17, 2011 11:29 UTC (Thu) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] I've noticed something of a negative vibe towards Ubuntu/Canonical in the comments of LWN, one example is the criticism that they don't do any application development. This may be true but misses the point. If Ubuntu actually did nothing then the user experience between Fedora and Ubuntu would be identical. It isn't. All the work that Ubuntu does on the user experience has real value and costs real money to do. I'm not sure therefore why application development is more important (and more worthy of a revenue stream) than polishing the user experience.
Application Development is not the whole story. Posted Feb 17, 2011 12:10 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"I'm not sure therefore why application development is more important (and more worthy of a revenue stream) than polishing the user experience."
Application development is what led to affiliate revenues.
If you are Novell and you developed Banshee and decided explicitly that the revenue from affiliate deals should go to GNOME Foundation, a non-profit entity instead of a commercial vendor, would you regret that decision now? Something to consider.
Application Development is not the whole story. Posted Feb 17, 2011 21:05 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
> If you are Novell and you developed Banshee and decided explicitly that the revenue from affiliate deals should go to GNOME Foundation, a non-profit entity instead of a commercial vendor, would you regret that decision now?
Why should you? That people using and/or redistributing the free software you wrote, decide differently shouldn't bother you at all. By doing that those people stay well within the boundaries set by, well, the core principles of free software. You should not develop free software if you are uncomfortable with that.
(Please note that, as far as I know, the Banshee developers actually do seem to be comfortable with the decisions discussed here).
Application Development is not the whole story. Posted Feb 17, 2011 22:09 UTC (Thu) by zonker (subscriber, #7867) [Link]
"Why should you? That people using and/or redistributing the free software you wrote, decide differently shouldn't bother you at all."
It's cool if you feel that way, but not so cool that you suggest how others "should" feel about something. Obviously, a number of people feel that it's not right for other players to override the affiliate codes for their own gain.
Just because licenses allow a certain type of behavior, it doesn't mean that the community or developers condone it or have to shrug and accept it.
"(Please note that, as far as I know, the Banshee developers actually do seem to be comfortable with the decisions discussed here)."
I've had two Banshee developers indicate that they were in favor of the story, so... there may be a lot of daylight between being "OK" with the decision enough not to raise a complaint and actually being "comfortable" with it.
Application Development is not the whole story. Posted Feb 17, 2011 23:53 UTC (Thu) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] "Application development is what led to affiliate revenues" Well yes but there wouldn't be an affiliate revenues if the application didn't have a distribution to umm distribute it. This is the old chicken and egg argument :-) I think if you explicitly decided anything about affiliate revenues from your software you haven't read the license you are releasing it under. Whether Novell regrets taking a particular course of action rather depends on why they did it - which I have absolutely zero information about.
Application Development is not the whole story. Posted Feb 17, 2011 12:25 UTC (Thu) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828) [Link]
My point isn't that Canonical should be doing app development or that they shouldn't be earning money from Ubuntu.
My point is that if Canonical start diverting revenue from their upstream projects, not only does that put them into a position of competing with a community they should be collaborating with, it's also a poor signal to send out to people who might want to develop apps, have them available in Ubuntu, and (shock) want to earn money off them.
This is the issue. This type of behaviour pits Canonical against other members of the community, and effectively puts them into competition with their upstreams. Rather than enlarging the market and creating value, they're attempting to grab share and destroying value. This simply is not a healthy situation.
Application Development is not the whole story. Posted Feb 17, 2011 19:23 UTC (Thu) by zonker (subscriber, #7867) [Link]
"My point is that if Canonical start diverting revenue from their upstream projects, not only does that put them into a position of competing with a community they should be collaborating with, it's also a poor signal to send out to people who might want to develop apps, have them available in Ubuntu, and (shock) want to earn money off them."
Exactly.
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