| |||||||||||||
Application Development is not the whole story.Application Development is not the whole story.Posted Feb 17, 2011 11:29 UTC (Thu) by grantingram (guest, #18390)In reply to: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World) by AlexHudson Parent article: Banshee Amazon Store disabled in Ubuntu 11.04 by Canonical (Network World)
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.
(Log in to post comments)
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.
|
|||||||||||||