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

[JD]

On 03/09/2011 03:37 PM, John Scott wrote:
> <snip>
> If I were Canonical, I would look at it as "free money", too.  It's like putting google ads on your blog.  Are you an evil profiteer if you put google ads on your blog and pocket the money?  According to this thread you ought to be giving all the profit to the apache foundation.
>
> My opinion is that Canonical has driven far more desktop adoption of Linux than any other single organization.  I support the adoption of Linux, and I'm very thankful that an organization exists that puts so much of its effort into making Linux adoption happen.  I'd love to see the day when I'm not forced to run Microsoft in the corporate world.  Canonical is one of those companies fighting to make that a reality.
Canonical has done lots of great things towards Linux adoption, but how 
they are dealing with Banshee/Gnome on this is ... er ... well, my 
mother would not approve.  At least based on my understanding of the 
current agreement from Canonical (pay they do not change it again).

Banshee setup a connection to Amazon´s music store and was giving 100% 
of the referral fees to Gnome.

Years later (ok, perhaps months), Canonical decides to include Banshee 
as the default music player in Ubuntu and decides - unilaterally - to 
take 75% of the amazon referal and give 25% to Gnome.  A week later, due 
to the outcry, they add that the referals to the Ubuntu-One music store 
will follow similar splits with 25% going to Gnome.  I read a few weeks 
ago that Gnome got over $3000 last year from Banshee Amazon referrals, 
so .25 x $3000 = $750.  That is a huge cut to Gnome and is just like 
stealing $2250.  Sure, the real referral income could be much larger, 
but we don´t know that.

If Canonical would guarantee to match last years referral income to 
Gnome as a minimal amount, I suspect this outcry would go away. I 
haven´t seen that, but I´m hardly in the know.  At some point the amount 
of cash matters and $3000-ish really isn´t all that much money to guarantee.

I do not expect to ever user Banshee - do not like mono - but everywhere 
I install it, it will be modified with the original Banshee amazon 
referral code, not the Canonical one.  I do use Ubuntu - lots of Ubuntu 
on desktops AND servers, so I want to support them, but not when they 
behave badly.

Here is my ¨good behavior¨ test.   Could I tell my mother and would she 
be proud about it?  If the answer is yes, then I´m doing just fine. If 
¨no¨, then I need to rethink the plan.  Canonical would get a ¨no¨ from 
Mom.  BTW, Mom does not care what is ¨legal¨, what is right matters more.