

Canonical to Banshee: either we disable affiliate code by default or we take 75% - naner
http://gburt.blogspot.com/2011/02/banshee-supporting-gnome-on-ubuntu.html

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StavrosK
For some reason, I have no clue what this means. I don't know what Ubuntu One,
Banshee or the Amazon store they refer to are, can someone elucidate? Thanks.

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rhizome
Banshee is a music player that uses Amazon as an in-app music store, with
affiliate connections that feed the Banshee people. The Ubuntu people are
making Banshee their default music player, but this whole money thing has
broken everybody's brain.

~~~
rbanffy
Makes sense. The exposition Banshee will get by being the official media
player on Ubuntu is huge.

Banshee is Mono-based, right?

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mscarborough
You are correct, it uses Mono.

I am a little behind the times these days (used debian/ubuntu for a few years
of laptop use), but this article seems to have a number of links to the
issues, which date back to April 2009.

[http://techrights.org/2009/10/22/disinformation-about-
banshe...](http://techrights.org/2009/10/22/disinformation-about-banshee/)

Too bad Amarok is KDE and not Gnome, it is such a better music player and
doesn't carry the MS/Novell stigma (just QT/KDE).

~~~
cookiecaper
Have you used Amarok 2.x? It's different than Amarok 1.x. Lots of people don't
like it. There are a few projects out there whose purpose is to clone Amarok
1.x and continue development (Clementine is one). Not sure why people didn't
just fork it, but whatever.

The Mono thing is tricky because MS could at the very least drag it through a
hellish tangle in the court system with all the MS-held .NET oriented patents
out there. MS doesn't have Sun to keep them in check anymore and as Windows
declines they'll get increasingly desperate and start targeting open systems.
They snuggle up to de Icaza and Novell now when they don't think they're a
threat, but if that situation changes MS and Mono will be mortal enemies,
technically and legally.

MS's whole life is about promoting Windows. At the moment Mono is seen as a
way to get more people into C# dev, because MS believe they have the best
tools for C#/.NET dev (Visual Studio) and you need Windows to run them. If you
get a bunch of OSS hackers on C# and .NET, when they need some extra cash
they'll take a freelance job and use/buy Visual Studio and/or C#. Things won't
always be that way, though.

Mono is kind of a wildcard because everyone knows subconsciously that when MS
gets desperate enough they'll be out to squeeze as much blood as possible from
patent infringement suits, etc. related to Mono. They may seize the
opportunity to try to kill Canonical or other relevant players in the not-
Windows market.

That said, I think it's fine to use it for now. :)

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nkassis
Is this serious or a joke about the latest Apple policy?

~~~
Stormbringer
Indeed. See also the epic shitstorm on HN over subscription revenue. From
elsewhere in the comments:

 _"This probably isn't that controversial"_

No no, trying to take 75% of someone else's revenue isn't bad at all. Now if
it was say... less than a third _that_ would be purest evil. /s

This illustrates one of my two main points about the Apple bashers either

(a) that whenever people discuss Apple there's a vocal minority for whom all
logic seems to fly out the window and it becomes opposites day or

(b) Apple is held to a different standard than others, e.g. it's okay for
Canonical to throw their weight around and take a massive slice of someone
else's pie, but if Apple tries to take a small slice of a pie everyone screams
blue murder.

\---

@Linux fans: sorry to post in your thread yo, but some of your guys were
trolling in the Apple bashing threads recently (and getting mighty fine karma
for doing so) so turn about is fair play.

~~~
johkra
As I understand it after reading
[http://quatermain.tumblr.com/post/3345687143/why-are-
vendors...](http://quatermain.tumblr.com/post/3345687143/why-are-vendors-
annoyed-by-this-iap-thing) , there's a big difference:

Canonical wants to take 75% of _revenue_ , leaving 25% to Gnome/Banshee.

Apple takes 30% of the _sales price_ \- the same part a vendor would get,
taking away 100% of the revenue.

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j_baker
Wow. This was seriously a bad move on Canonical's part. I really wonder if
Canonical _knew_ that the revenue was going to GNOME. I simply have trouble
believing that Canonical would do something so boneheaded.

~~~
redthrowaway
As others have said, the Amazon referrals would compete directly with Ubuntu
One, meaning they would lose money if they left it in place. Canonical still
needs money to function, just like everyone else. Their offer was to either
disable the Amazon links by default, driving people to use Ubuntu One, or to
enable them by default and take a big cut.

Not that unreasonable at all.

~~~
evgen
So, to paraphrase your argument using another recent example:

"As others have said, the Amazon Kindle app browser redirect competes directly
with Apple iBooks, meaning Apple would lose money if they left it in place.
Apple still needs money to function, just like everybody else. Their updated
terms are to either disable the browser redirect, driving people to use
iBooks, or to enable in-app book purchases and take a 30% cut."

I guess "unreasonable" is a somewhat flexible term in the community depending
on the players involved...

~~~
sethwoodworth
That's not quite correct in this case, here's another example: "The Amazon
Kindle app browser competes directly with Apple iBooks, meaning Apple would
lose money if they left it in place. So Apple doesn't ship the Kindle app
browser by default, but can easily be installed."

Actually, it's easier than that. Banshee's store will be installed, you just
have to enable it.

So no, not the same thing.

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technomancy
Another thing worth considering is that while Amazon offers an official client
for Linux systems, it is very difficult to install unless you have a 32-bit
system for some reason.

~~~
krakensden
It also doesn't run on the latest Ubuntu- some sort of Boost versioning issue.

