[ale] Canonical makes Apple look so good...

Michael B. Trausch mike at trausch.us
Mon Mar 7 19:29:39 EST 2011


On Mon, 2011-03-07 at 18:42 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> The complaint is not that Canonical is getting money from the music
> store.
> 
> The complaint is that they have replaced Gnome as the recipient of 75%
> of that money.  They could do that since the payment collection system
> was opensource and canonical was able to change the payee line as it
> desired in the Ubuntu release.

Indeed.  Said better than I did for sure.

> That's sort of like your employer mandating what bank you use and the
> bank charging you 75% to cash your paycheck.
> 
> Even if legal, most people would find that unethical.  And unethical
> is something we don't want associated with linux.

It's partially their arrogance, too.  They seem to assume that they are
a more worthwhile destination for funds than the GNOME Foundation.

They're not.  They sell services and support, and they have other ways
of making money.  The GNOME Foundation thrives on donations.

I cannot begin to quantify precisely how I feel about this, other than
to say that it is very doubtful in my own mind that I will continue to
use Ubuntu.  And I might even start to advocate against it.

I mean, it's not like Banshee was taking the money for themselves.  They
were giving it to GNOME --- that was a honorable thing to do.  What
Canonical is doing is, IMHO, very dishonorable.  Very.

	--- Mike



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