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Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code
In something of a reprise of the February incident where Canonical switched Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code so that it could collect the revenue (and share
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Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 18:35 UTC (Fri) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]
Clem stopped but the #Banshee IRC channel today to ask the project to update the website to reflect that Mint as of release 12 will take 50% of the revenue for themselves and let 50% go to GNOME.
Also note that Canonical takes 75% not 70% as implied in the article. Also all Banshee Amazon revenue go directly to the GNOME foundation, not the Banshee project.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 18:50 UTC (Fri) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]
> Also note that Canonical takes 75% not 70% as implied in the article.
Indeed, my mistake, fixed now, thanks.
jake
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 18:40 UTC (Fri) by theophrastus (guest, #80847) [Link]
Could some kind person "explain this like to a five year old" for me? Something like:
(1) apt-get install banshee
that is, at what point does Linux Mint get some of my money? have they added something in the referring URL that has the seller kick back some percent commission to their offshore cameroonian bank account, or ...?
thankee!
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 18:59 UTC (Fri) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]
1) Go to the Amazon store within Banshee
2) Buy songs 3) Profit
there is a referral token added to the transaction and the owner of that token gets a small cut for sending business Amazon's way. Many little cuts do however make a fairly sizable stream, I believe in the past year Banshee's support for Amazon made the GNOME Foundation over 9000 USD.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 19:05 UTC (Fri) by theophrastus (guest, #80847) [Link]
So it is just an altered URL? So what stops me from hex-editing in Banshee a referral to my own account? (yes i know that would be pennies since i'm just one pathetic user) Does one have to register with Amazon? and if so, why does anyone trust Amazon to deal a fair cut?
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 19:19 UTC (Fri) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]
Nothing prevents you from altering the code and running your own redirect service (I believe Banshee even includes the code to do this). It is all under the MIT X11 license, more freedom than you can throw a moose at.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 19:19 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]
Why are you hex-editing? This is an open source program you can just rebuild, if you want. The comment in the source code asks you nicely not to, though. http://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee/tree/src/Extensions/B...
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 10:58 UTC (Sat) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
Changing a fixed length string in a binary is much easier than instlalling the build tool chain and compiling the whole thing from source.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 12, 2011 3:15 UTC (Mon) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link] With Debian based systems, it's really easy to rebuild things from source: apt-get source foo to get the source, sudo apt-get build-dep foo to get the build dependencies, and then something like debuild -i -us -uc -b to build the package. Hex editing may be a lot quicker for a big package, but it really isn't much easier.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 13, 2011 15:51 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
You may find apt-src to be a useful tool, too.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 13:12 UTC (Sat) by andreasb (subscriber, #80258) [Link]
What exactly would be the point of changing the referral for yourself? So you get a tiny sum of money once for referring one person (yourself) to Amazon?
Unless you can get lots of people to use the Banshee with your referral account, a single referral of yourself to Amazon (if referring yourself is even allowed) won't exactly be a fountain of riches.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 19:12 UTC (Sat) by theophrastus (guest, #80847) [Link]
yes i knew that. it was a hypothetical to clarify my understanding of the underlying mechanism. for instance, i wanted to be clear that there wasn't a "tee" in this process that sent any of my (financial) information directly to Ubuntu or Linux_Mint or whom-ever (the experts here have obviously checked that that isn't the case and have thereby allayed my fears [wink])
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 5:36 UTC (Sat) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link]
So Gnome makes $750 / month, Mint makes $3.41 / month ... sounds like we have a new metric to measure the number of users of Mint as opposed to overall users of Gnome.
<gdr>
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 12:38 UTC (Sat) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]
Or it just means Mint users prefer other media players. Such high profits for Gnome are made mainly by Ubuntu users, but this will change with 12.04.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 14:11 UTC (Sat) by Otus (guest, #67685) [Link]
If they've only made the change recently, wouldn't that $3.41 only represent those having the bleeding edge Mint? Or was this an update that also went to older Mint installations?
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 9, 2011 19:49 UTC (Fri) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
But isn't this what Free Software is all about?
See, Linux Mint is free to do whatever they want with with the code that's included in Linux Mint and with the money they make with that code. As long as they respect the licenses of the code they use in their distribution there's nothing we could, or even should, think about it. Allowing people to make money by using third parties code is simply one of the core principles of Free Software. I'd say it should be promoted, and not frowned upon.
(This discussion could end in some déjà vu for some of us, but it seems the points other people and I made when a similar discussion was had about Ubuntu, need to be stressed. For the record: I use neither Linux Mint nor Ubuntu.)
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 1:35 UTC (Sat) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Sure, Free Software lets people do certain things with the code, but it isn't always just a matter of adhering to the licence, at least if the intention is to play nicely with other people. Saying that you're making someone's application popular and bringing them users, and claiming to offer support and maintenance benefits to the upstream developers, but then dropping them like a hot potato when those upstream developers can't fix the bugs (or work on the feature requests) fast enough isn't really a great way of keeping on everyone's good side, as I pointed out recently and when this topic last came up.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 12, 2011 10:14 UTC (Mon) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
0) I noticed some phrases you use in the comments you linked to:
- "dabbling with that application's revenue stream"; - "not providing a replacement stream of funding": and - "that distribution is cultivating a reputation for freeloading at the expense of the groups that contribute to its success".
Do those really reflect how you feel about this?
1) See, the position you take in this discussion comes about as close as it gets to wanting people to pay for code or to adding a "field of use" restriction to code. And we all know there's really little a Free Software developer can do once the code is released: third parties can remove code, add code, replace code, etc. And that goes for this "magic" Amazon URL too. This is all rather basic, of course.
2) If Free Software developers want to earn money with their code there are some options. Adding a "magic", somehow money generating, URL is one of them. But developers shouldn't expect other people to leave that URL untouched. And if they do, they should perhaps reconsider writing Free Software.
3) This goes both ways. Free Software developers do not have to fix the bugs the people using their code report. They do not have to add the features these people request. Etc. Etc. And this happens all the time. Some users (whether persons or organizations) have a much better chance of getting what they want from Free Software developers (because they contribute code, because they fund development, etc., etc.). We all know that. And in itself that's not bad.
4) Free Software comes with few strings attached. A requirement to contribute something to people or projects that wrote that Free Software isn't one of them. If I'd look at the code that I use I guess I'd find code written by thousands of people and a lot of different organizations. For the vast majority of that code I will never, ever contribute anything to the projects or people involved.
I see nothing wrong about that. It's just a fact of life.
And I wouldn't be surprised if organizations that contribute a lot to Free Software, still contribute next to nothing to a lot - perhaps even most - of the projects whose Free Software they use.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 12, 2011 12:57 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] See, the position you take in this discussion comes about as close as it gets to wanting people to pay for code or to adding a "field of use" restriction to code. I don't see that at all. There's nothing in the licensing (nor would I want the consequences of there being anything in the licensing) to stop anyone changing a referral code in a program (or in the data accompanying a program), and the upstream developers cannot expect to have such a code preserved throughout its distribution - so I agree with your point #2 - but we're not observing these dynamics in complete isolation. I think a lot of people would agree with the statement that Ubuntu "is cultivating a reputation for freeloading at the expense of the groups that contribute to its success" in the case in question, and not just because those people have an axe to grind. It just looks petty when a well-funded, for-profit organisation skims off some revenue under the excuse that they have to cover their costs, especially when the amount is relatively small. You can argue that Mint deserves the revenue more than Canonical, mostly because it appears to survive on donations, but the ethical issue arises because any change to a revenue stream is going to look like someone is diverting that stream because they feel that they deserve it more. To an extent, you can put some blame on the upstream developers: they have in a way put a price on their work that others must decide to either preserve or remove, and the justification for any alterations to that price is inevitably going to be scrutinised in terms of the total value added and according to notions of price transparency. For example, the Ubuntu people might argue that they add value in quality assurance and packaging. Even if you accept this, you might then wonder why the way they generate revenue involves a "price" on transactions conducted in the context of a particular program and not, for example, as an optional cost for the distribution itself. I don't see anything wrong with removing revenue-generating features from applications altogether: other platforms have become increasingly commercialised and advert-heavy. A less controversial solution might have involved removing all specific revenue-generating features from applications and setting up a fair revenue-sharing arrangement with as much of upstream as possible, thus reducing the temptation for every project to start sneaking adverts, adware/nagware elements and lots of other less-than-desirable things into their software. The other aspect of the uneven relationship is the matter of who is paying the piper and whether they actually call the tune, and I get the impression that Ubuntu expected much more playing for their dollar in this respect. I think the whole debacle, at least involving Ubuntu, could have been resolved with a mature discussion about the way people expect upstream projects to afford to do their work, fix bugs, and develop those new features people apparently want. That would have been a way of avoiding the pitfalls I mention above.
It's that the percentages are upside down that gets me Posted Dec 24, 2011 4:17 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
I agree with most of what you wrote and find the idea of simply removing the revenue generating features perhaps worthy of more discussion, but what bothers me about this whole thing is that in particular, Ubuntu's percentages seem upside down!
Assuming the revenue generating code isn't removed...
To help establish the parameters of the debate, I don't believe anyone would have seriously objected to Ubuntu (or Mint or whoever) taking a 10% "tithe" as it were. Sure there might have been a bit of grumbling, but who could seriously argue that a major distro isn't entitled to taking 10% for all they do, and especially the additional users they'll bring by making it the default?
OTOH, anything above 50% for the distro just seems ridiculously greedy, given the proportional work the original devs (and yes, I know it goes to gnome not banshee, but that's exactly where the banshee devs chose to set it to go, so it's still effectively them getting it and donating it to gnome) and indeed the desktop they depend on, vs. the distro, puts in. In fact, 75%-distro/25%app(desktop) is /so/ egregiously upside down that were I an Ubuntu user I'd be personally embarrassed for my distro's actions, and take it from experience, when a customer/user goes from being proud to say they use/buy something to being embarrassed to say it, they're well on their way out the door! Meanwhile, 75/25 toward the distro is also egregious enough that I'd probably be either hex editing (if I were a recent proprietary-ware convert or didn't have an existing toolchain installation, I was here in the early 00s when I had just come from MS, where I did make use of a hex editor from time to time) or patching sources and building myself (the gentoo-user that I actually am, today), if I used the music-purchase feature of that app, until I did my research and found a suitable distro replacement that I'd not be embarrassed to actually state that I used.
So at least here, it's not a problem with the idea in general, it's a problem with the relative proportions. IMO, anything less than a 50/50 split toward the app devs is simply being greedy and a distro would have to go a *VERY* long way to even come CLOSE to justifying it. (Directly sponsoring a dev's time to work on that project, and offering first dibs at that sponsorship to one of the original project devs might come close, tho...)
That establishes what I'd consider a reasonable negotiating zone, 10%-50% to the distro, 50-90% to the app/desktop-devs. Mint's 50% take falls at the distro-favored extreme of that range, so I'd consider it at least defensible and not something I'd be likely to distro-hop for, at least if I otherwise had a positive opinion of the distro, and after all, if that's not the case, I'm probably at least beginning to check on other options already.
Within that 10-50%-to-distro range, 20% could also be reasonably argued, or even 25%. The 25% to distro, 75% to app/desktop is about where it'd begin to make me think about it, tho, and by 33.3%, I'd be STRONGLY thinking about it. At that point, I'd expect some cooperation from the distro in other areas, or at least a big enough distro that it'd sizably affect the revenue stream even if the distro /was/ taking a third of it.
By 50%, they better be seriously cooperating with the devs, handling the bugs themselves and submitting patches that only need integrated upstream, knowing what the devs would take and rejecting ideas and patches they'd not be interested in, etc. Either that or they better be community distros who properly negotiated a 50% split such that the app devs fully agreed to it, and not just because it was free software and the distro could therefore do it anyway, with or without their permission.
As for a $3-and-change monthly income, if it's too much of a hassle to spend the time negotiating it (and I'd agree that it is), then it's too much of a hassle to be worth carrying the patch in the first place. Just let it be as it was, in that case.
Of course, three-way (plus) splits get a bit more complicated, but the basic idea remains the same. However it's split, if the app-devs aren't getting a plurality, there's something wrong. Just as my two-way ideal no-extenuating-circumstances split might be 15-20 percent to the distro, 80-85% app/desktop-devs, if Mint decides to split with Ubuntu and Debian as well, I'd place an ideal split at perhaps 15/10/10/65, primary distro, two upstream distros, app/desktop-devs. A case could perhaps be argued for 30/20/20/30 or 33.3/16.7/16.7/33.3 or possibly even 40/10/10/40 or 4-way 25%, but again, if the app-devs aren't getting a plurality cut to whatever they originally setup, it's simply upside down and looks embarrassingly ridiculous.
By that measure, at least Mint's 50/50 split isn't embarrassingly upside down, like Ubuntu's 75/25 tilt toward the distro is, but it's still marginal, and if indeed the sums involved are so small it's not worth the hassle arguing over it, don't apply either ubuntu's patch or mint's to it, and let the money go where it was going before.
Of course, all that said, there's multiple reasons this particular case isn't going to affect me, including that if it's mono, surely there's a better alternative for my uses (I'm with RMS on that, mono's great for porting apps but there's better choices for freedomware loving folks doing new code). But that doesn't mean such issues won't affect me in some form or other, in the future.
Duncan
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 1:30 UTC (Sat) by chithanh (guest, #52801) [Link]
Why not let the user decide? First time the user makes a purchase, display a slider where the user can configure what is the distro's/upstream's cut.
Besides, making money with the code as you see fit belongs to the important principles of free software.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 20:33 UTC (Sat) by theophrastus (guest, #80847) [Link]
I think that's a great idea. It would certainly loosen my miserly grip on my miniscule savings if i could dial in how much would go to whome.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 10, 2011 2:29 UTC (Sat) by topyli (subscriber, #62267) [Link]
What is this thing about "sharing with Banshee" vs. "sharing with somebody else" or "pocketing the money"? Nobody shares, or can share, anything with Banshee. The referrals generated from Banshee's original Amazon plugin go to the GNOME Foundation, not "Banshee" which is not even an organization that would be able to handle any money. I'm sure it's a great team, but it would be nice to have the facts straight. Would someone please ask the Banshee team members to say something related to this?
Otherwise, related to the original Ubuntu incident, it would have been much better PR for Canonical to have said back then something like, "we're a business, and the license and the law allow us to do this, so we'd rather put this money over here than over there - go away and leave me be," than even trying to please people who are going to be disappointed with their share if it's something else than "everything". Mint is doing the right thing.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 15, 2011 12:05 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]
> What is this thing about "sharing with Banshee" vs. "sharing with somebody
> else" or "pocketing the money"? Nobody shares, or can share, anything with > Banshee. The referrals generated from Banshee's original Amazon plugin go > to the GNOME Foundation, not "Banshee" which is not even an organization > that would be able to handle any money. I'm sure it's a great team, but it > would be nice to have the facts straight. Would someone please ask the > Banshee team members to say something related to this?
The money that gets to the GNOME Foundation is then earmarked for Mono and Banshee such as hackfests, and travel to related conferences or events. It's also where the original author chose to direct the money.
Neither Canonical nor Mint wrote Banshee, wrote the Amazon plugin, or really contributed to the project, yet take a cut.
Yes, legally, they can do it. But it doesn't mean they should.
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 15, 2011 14:10 UTC (Thu) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]
Except.. it isn't earmarked. Every penny goes to GNOME, there is an understanding that Banshee can make requests for what to do with half of that income, but such a request has never been issued (note: request, not demand). Any hackfest activities relating to Banshee or Mono gets funded on exactly the same terms as every other GNOME hackfet.
Banshee has never gotten a penny out of this, please refrain from implying that it is the case.
(Full disclosure: I am a Banshee contributor and I organized the 2011 Mono+GNOME hackfest)
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 15, 2011 14:25 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]
> Banshee has never gotten a penny out of this, please refrain from implying that it is the case.
I never implied that. I clearly said that the money was earmarked (it comes from a different referral code from the rest of GNOME's Amazon fees), and that it was available for Banshee related activities, if there were any.
Given the GNOME Foundation's nature, we cannot 1) hold onto money for the sake of it, it needs to be spent 2) give money without due diligence, as it could contravene our not-for-profit status. But if it follows GNOME's mission statement, and is compatible with a not-for-profit status, then it can be done.
The point is that neither Banshee, nor GNOME are getting the originally intended referral fees, from people who did not contribute to Banshee. If all the money went towards paying somebody to do Banshee work, then we wouldn't be having that conversation.
(Full disclosure: I'm on the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, and was involved in the discussion on how money would be used once given to the Foundation with Gabriel, Aaron and Stormy in GUADEC 2010).
Linux Mint switches Banshee's Amazon MP3 store referral code Posted Dec 12, 2011 14:47 UTC (Mon) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
The $3.41 are peanuts compared to the amount of free advertisement Linux Mint has got from this switch.
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