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« Dialogue de sourds dans des bureaux de postes | openSUSE 11.4 Launch Party in Paris! »

Monday 28 February 2011

Canonical, you're breaking my heart

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I've been resisting blogging or talking about this topic publicly, but I'm so frustrated with how Canonical dealt with the whole topic that I can't resist more... If you don't want to read my stuff, I encourage you to go read Zonker's articles about the story.

Very short summary for those who didn't follow:

the Ubuntu community decided to switch to Banshee as default music player.
Canonical offers the Ubuntu One Music Store in the default Ubuntu music player to let people buy music online. Referral fees go to Canonical (as far as I know).
Banshee comes with an Amazon MP3 Store plugin to let people buy music online. Referral fees go to the GNOME Foundation.
with the switch to Banshee by default in Ubuntu, Canonical proposed two options to the Banshee developers: disable the Amazon MP3 Store plugin by default, or changing the affiliate code for the Amazon MP3 Store and giving 25% of the referral fees to the GNOME Foundation (the other 75% would be going to Canonical). Banshee developers chose to keep the money going to the GNOME Foundation, and to have the plugin disabled by default.
a few days later, Canonical changed their mind and decided that the Amazon MP3 Store would stay enabled, and that 25% of all referral fees (Amazon MP3 Store and Ubuntu One Music Store) would go to the GNOME Foundation.

There are a few things that are wrong with this story, and I've read a few things that made me wonder if some of the people standing for Canonical's decision in the comments I've read have a good understanding of everything (and maybe they do; everybody is entitled to his own opinions after all). It's worth pointing out first that I'm annoyed at Canonical, and not at Ubuntu, and my first two items below explain this:

Money does not go to Ubuntu. It goes to Canonical. I'll start with that, because I feel this was neglected by most. I would be much less annoyed if the money went to Ubuntu instead of Canonical. This way I would know that the money would be used for Free Software; I would still not be completely happy (see other points below), but that would make me feel better. But it turns out there is no active Ubuntu Foundation (the Ubuntu Foundation does exist, but is nowhere near active or alive), which means there is no real way for Ubuntu, as a project, to collect money. The result is that we have no idea how the money will be used, in concrete terms; and this raises accounting questions.

This is not an Ubuntu decision, this is a decision from Canonical. As far as I can tell, this decision was not discussed in any way inside the Ubuntu community, and I have serious concerns that such a decision that does affect Ubuntu is not taken by the Ubuntu community. I've added an agenda item to the next Community Council meeting (tomorrow, March 1st, at 21:00 UTC, in #ubuntu-meeting). To be blunt, though, I have absolutely no hope of open discussion there: I've yet to heard of anything that is agreed by the Community Council that goes against the interests of Canonical. I believe that is a serious flaw in the Ubuntu governance, and it's certainly not the first time this is highlighted.

It is legal, but it is not necessarily right. Of course it is legal because of Banshee's license. Nobody is arguing about that. However, the will of the Banshee developers is to donate money to the GNOME Foundation. They've expressed this will twice: when they first chose to donate the money to the GNOME Foundation, and when they chose one of the two options proposed by Canonical. So Canonical's decision is explicitly going against the will of the developers. It is legal, but going against the will of the developers is definitely wrong.

Releasing Banshee as free software doesn't mean Banshee developers don't care about how their software is changed or used. I've read several times that Banshee developers could simply have chosen another license to avoid this issue. That's an extremely dangerous slope: many free software developers choose a free software license because they believe in freedom and they believe that releasing their software under these terms will help improve the world in some way. That's our contribution to making the world a better place. We also believe that, usually, people will understand what we want to achieve and will respect that. Canonical's decision, and how it was taken, doesn't show any such respect. Should we stop contributing to making the world a better place because a company is doing things wrong? I don't think so. We should try to make that company a better citizen, and keep making the world a better place. Suggesting that we can simply choose a non-free license is suggesting that we stop trying to achieve our dreams. Sure, we could do that, but that's certainly not the right solution.

A 75%/25% deal does not reflect what Canonical brings to Banshee. I've read this several times: people think it's actually a fair deal because Ubuntu does most of the job, by integrating Banshee in Ubuntu and by exposing it to many more users. I'm disturbed when I read this. The fact is that Ubuntu chose to adopt Banshee by default because it was the best solution. If it was the best solution already, then somehow, the Banshee developers did a hell of a great job and Banshee actually improves Ubuntu. And that part is certainly more than 25% of the whole job, isn't it? I mean, if that's not the case, then certainly Ubuntu would be shipping with something better already. Also, this way of thinking gets me wondering: do people seriously suggest that Ubuntu would exist and be successful without great upstream developers? The work done to build Ubuntu is integration. It is not easy, there's no need to argue about that and I know this because I work on a distribution. So I know it's far from trivial. But compared to actually writing the applications upstream... Most of the hard work lives upstream, and integration, while key, is only a small percentage of the work. Even the argument that Ubuntu will bring more users falls apart for me because Ubuntu brings more users to applications, but only because those applications themselves are great. Ubuntu can only bring something to the applications because the applications bring something to Ubuntu.

No, a 75%/25% deal is not necessarily a better deal for the GNOME Foundation, money-wise. Several people mentioned that 25% of referrals fees of the plugin enabled by default is higher than 100% of referrals fees of the plugin disabled by default. How can we know? We can't. We simply don't know. I've heard that the Ubuntu One Music Store is... suboptimal, so I think it's also a fair position to assume that many people would have found on the web that there's a great Amazon MP3 Store plugin, and would have switched to it. It could therefore turn out that in the end, maybe, even if the plugin would have been disabled by default, it would have brought more money to the GNOME Foundation. Who's right? Let's be honest and agree that we don't know.

No, even if it's a better deal money-wise, a 75%/25% deal is not necessarily a better deal for the GNOME Foundation. You know what? Please don't put words in the mouth of the GNOME Foundation, and leave the GNOME Foundation decide for itself. The GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization and while the GNOME Foundation could use more money, it's certainly not the goal of the Foundation. As a past Foundation Board member, my informed guess is that most members of the GNOME Foundation would agree that respecting the will of authors is more important than money. If the GNOME Foundation decided to take a public position about what is best for itself, it could well be something as simple as this deal is not in our best interests. I'm of course not saying this is the position of the GNOME Foundation since that's not my job, but I hope this helps people understand that more money doesn't make the deal a better one for the Foundation.

There is now no way to make the money go to the GNOME Foundation. With the current decision, there is no way for the user to choose to leave the money to the GNOME Foundation. I've seen at least a comment from Jono suggesting that Banshee could distribute a new plugin for that. I can certainly understand that Canonical doesn't want to do that itself, but Ubuntu people could. Is there any reason that Ubuntu can't ship this small plugin (17 KB) itself, on the CD, or even in a package in the Ubuntu repositories? If people would do the job, would the package get accepted on the CD? I don't want to guess, so I'll leave the question open.

The whole decision process is just alarmly broken. Canonical came with two options, and one was chosen by Banshee developers. There was some reaction in blog posts, news articles and comments about the two options, that were already negative about the proposed choice. And then Canonical came back with what I understand is a unilateral decision, that does not respect the previous explicit choice of Banshee developers. Sure, there's now 25% of the referrals fees from the Ubuntu One Music Store, but did some people really think that would make Banshee developers change their mind? How can this sound right?

I'm sure I could go on and on, if I'd take more time, but I'm not sure it's worth it. If the deal was something like 25%/75% or even 50/%50, I think I'd feel a bit better but I'd still want the money to go to Ubuntu instead of Canonical, especially as Canonical did absolutely nothing to develop this Amazon MP3 Store plugin. I'd be surprised if the Ubuntu community would have no use for money that it could decide how to spend.

The bottom line is that I'm highly annoyed. It's just yet another illustration that, even though some parts of Canonical care (or try to care) about upstream, in the end, what matters to Canonical is money. I'm even more annoyed because I have many good friends at Canonical, and that makes me not want to dislike their company.

Canonical, you're breaking my heart: I thought you understood the spirit of Free Software, but you're just another normal company that is first going after money.

[11:21] | [GNOME] | [#568]

Comments

1. Sebastian Dröge [28/02/2011@11:50]

I have to agree with you Vincent, you're essentially summarizing my own feelings and oppinions about this topic.
Bad move Canonical...

2. sad_dad [28/02/2011@12:10]

Nothing new.

3. Luis Fernando [28/02/2011@13:04]

That's why there will always have bumps when a company leads a free sofware project.
Companies, by definition, have a budget, and have to show profitability.
I really disagree with what was done by Canonical.
I think things like this should be expected (and will probably happen again), as it's an attempt to earn money to pay the bills.
But a company with real vision of free software should find other means.
As said several times, this is not illegal, but is far from moral.

4. Lucas Rocha [28/02/2011@13:10]

Great post, my friend! Spot on!

5. Seif Lotfy [28/02/2011@13:16]

I couldn't agree with you more Vincent. Maybe somehow defining some moral and ethical guidelines in your next blog post would be interesting for Canonical and other projects, organizations and companies.

6. Michael [28/02/2011@13:16]

Someone commenting on the issue pointed a Benjamin Mako Hill interview about Ubuntu governance and the way they deal with community council ( http://blog.grossmeier.net/2011/02/... ). I was not able to listen to it, either my soundcard is too crappy, or the phone interview was bad ( or the codec ), but it seemed to be interesting, and likely worth a shot.

7. Sam Thursfield [28/02/2011@13:24]

The whole issue is really a disaster. I mean the Banshee developers decide to give the money to the GNOME project, but Banshee couldn't have happened without Mono, without X.Org, which in turn couldn't have happened with XFree86, without GNU, without Linux ... (and for Ubuntu, this is true to a far greater degree of course).

It's a complex issue and Amazon referral fees are an unexpected place for software revenue to come from and one that's thrown us off balance a little I think. I certainly couldn't say what the "right" thing to do here would be.

8. Fran [28/02/2011@13:28]

Every user can optionally uninstall the altered copy of Banshee from their Ubuntu, and then take a properly functioning copy from the Banshee site at http://banshee.fm/download/

Each user can then choose to support Gnome and free software.

9. Sam Thursfield [28/02/2011@13:29]

However, you have highlighted a big hole in Canonical's argument (and entire business model) in that the money goes to a corporate entity rather than a community foundation. Many of those who contribute voluntarily to Ubuntu may well not be aware (or not have fully thought through) that they are effectively working for a corporation for free rather than a nonprofit indirectly supported by a company.

10. planet ubuntu reader [28/02/2011@13:41]

Primary responsibility of any company is to its shareholders. Open source or not, a company's primary motivation is to turn a profit. If those operating the company did not put this first and foremost, they would be remiss in their duty and should be fired. Turning on a company because those running it are actually trying to do their jobs properly seems almost backward.

As distasteful as this whole saga is, freedom means people can do things you dont like and it's still okay. If you release code under a license that explicitly allows people to do whatever they want with it, and then later discover that you dont like it when they actually utilise that right, maybe the code needs to be re-released in future under a different license. Either it's completely free, or it's restricted in some way. Futurama has a wonderful episode about this (Freedom Day), which I'll be putting on shortly as a reminder that freedom means that just because I think something is wrong, doesn't mean it is.

11. inigoalonso [28/02/2011@13:45]

@Fran: Yeah, but then they wouldn't have the advantage of the large number of users that Ubuntu brings to the table by default. Obviously, the Banshee developers do not want their software to be Free in spirit, only in the letter of the license they have chosen.

In a related issue, spreading the use of Banshee is akin of giving value to Microsoft's promises about not suing anybody over their patents covering Mono...

It would be neat if users where given to chance to support whoever they want.

12. Meneer R [28/02/2011@14:00]

Ehm. I don't think I disagree, but either Canonical is lying or you are very misinformed.

1. Canonical did not change it's mind, it made a _new_ offer to Banshee, which they then accepted.

2. The new deal means that also 25% of the profits on the Ubuntu One plugin are shared with Gnome.

3. Banshee devs took that deal.

All other arguments are still standing.
But please, either get the facts right, or make a big fuzz about Canonical lying.

A big opinionated piece like this requires that you do your homework.

13. Vincent [28/02/2011@14:07]

@Fran: that's assuming that the users are aware of this specific issue, which will possibly not be the case (even if they'd possibly care about it, had they known).

Pushing things a bit further, you're nearly suggesting that the best way for developers to ensure their will is respected is to stop trusting distributions, and to take care of distributing their software themselves. That's a solution sure, but I would rather hope we can get trust between app developers and distributions in the first place.

14. Sandy [28/02/2011@14:10]

@Meener: You are incorrect. Please read Vincent's sources on this. Canonical offered one thing, and then took it back. This is as simple as reading the two most recent blog posts from Banshee maintainer Gabriel Burt.

You are correct that 25% of U1MS profits now go to GNOME, but I think that's not relevant to any of Vincent's points.

15. Vincent [28/02/2011@14:34]

@planet ubuntu reader: right. And that means Canonical is just another normal company, is why I'm sad.

Also the fact is that Ubuntu itself is not supposed to be Canonical's product, but the product of the Ubuntu community, so I find it debatable that, in this case, the money should got to Canonical instead of Ubuntu. Especially as Canonical itself didn't do any of the work for the Amazon MP3 Store plugin (contrary to what happened with the Ubuntu One Music Store); the real work is integration (which is nearly nothing here, since banshee was already packaged) and distributing to many users (which is done by Ubuntu, not Canonical).

16. migueleonm [28/02/2011@14:35]

How can anybody argue with you? nobody can't because you're right but when you say "but you're just another normal company that is first going after money." Well, is not a foundation and even foundations needs money. Ofc they first goal is money.

The point is they need to make a better deal with developers, a more fair deal but do not say that the money as a bad thing because is an enterprise and money is first.

17. juancarlospaco [28/02/2011@14:44]

GPL is all about money, if you dont like it, fork it, dont complain, patch

18. Vincent [28/02/2011@14:45]

@migueleonm: I'm not sure why you're saying you can't argue with me, can you elaborate? And yes, companies have to make money; but some companies try to do it while still respecting some values. It's obviously harder, though, I'm not claiming otherwise.

I think you're missing my main point: while I want to respect Canonical as a company, I can't because of things like this. Maybe Canonical is perfectly fine not having my respect (and well, what can I do about it except state my opinion on my blog?). The real question is how many other active free software contributors feel the same way, and if it's fine that Canonical doesn't respect those developers. I can't answer to that question, as it's up to Canonical to decide whether they want love from free software contributors or not.

19. anonynmous coward [28/02/2011@14:48]

About the question "who brings the most 'clients' Ubuntu or Banshee?" I think it is a chicken and egg question. In my point of view Ubuntu CERTAINLY contributes to the increase of Bashee usage. Does that increase warrant a 75/25 deal? I don't think so.

Also the Banshee project should forbid Ubuntu to use the word/trademark "Banshee". Ubuntu should make the program available under a different name.

20. R.U.Sirius [28/02/2011@14:52]

@planet ubuntu reader: i totally agree with you, i think Canonical has to do what companies have to do to exist in the actual money-system. otherwise they can't spread Ubuntu more widely. i think THAT is the reason for the company Canonical to exist -> SPREAD Ubuntu into the world of patented and closed software and OSs...only my opinion ;-)

21. Dean [28/02/2011@14:52]

As you've indicated we're wholly dependent on Canonical. The Ubuntu community don't have a bank account into which it could receive those funds or a defined process in how to allocate them.

To generalise, I think that the community council knows Ubuntu would be nowhere if Canonical disappeared and so are eager to support them, so that they can support us. By the council not challenging Canonical, the community is not diversifying away from a single backer (just like suse and fedora).

I do think that the council are probably are representing the opinion of a majority of community members in backing Canonical.

22. Sense Hofstede [28/02/2011@14:56]

@Vincent: From what I've heard and seen at the last UDS, Canoncial would like developers to take publishing (partially) in their own hand. This will lighten the burden of packaging and maintaining everything, and allow the developers greater freedom (in distribution) and faster inclusion. That may also be the optimal solution for Banshee. However, unfortunately for them, maybe, Banshee was chosen as the default media player for Ubuntu. That means that Banshee will be delivered as an integrated part of the desktop, no matter what. So there goes your distribution freedom.

Canonical mishandled this case severely. The damage the bad PR does, doesn't even come close to the impact this has on upstream relations. I'm also puzzled why people would call the second offer a deal, when apparently it was a decision by just Canonical.

It is my conviction that when you grant people a certain right, that they are allowed to use it, and that you should let them use that right. In this case, Canonical has the right to make this change. Banshee's license renders its negotiation position worthless, it can demand virtually nothing. However, I also believe that even when people exercise a right they have, they can be morally good or bad. Morality is a very subjective thing, so it is a very slippery slope. Not everyone will agree on the moral judgement of this case.

You, for example, feel that Canonical is being bad by not respecting the wishes of Banshee's developers. I feel that Canonical does have the right to take some of the money if it wishes. Maybe the 75% is justified, but I do think that it should be adjusted to reflect the proven contribution of Ubuntu to the service provided to Amazon: more customers. Like you mentioned in your post, we don't know that 25% enabled will be more than 100% disabled. When the plugin has been in use long enough to reasonably say how much money it brings in, Canonical should make data public and adjust the fee accordingly.

23. M. [28/02/2011@15:40]

I absolutely agree with you. What Canonical is doing here is without any doubt legal, nevertheless, I believe Canonical should maintain a better relationship with its community and developers. This isn't a legal matter, this is a matter of respect to GNOME and to the people who work and contribute to it.

24. anonymous [28/02/2011@15:52]

well, going for money isn't bad it in itself. In some way most of us do, at least most of us has to.

But canonical has always been on the wrong side, just by incorporating in a tax haven (isle of man), which can be easily considered as feeding of the general society without contributing back.

25. Jonathan Carter [28/02/2011@15:52]

I think at some point, the idea was to have Ubuntu as a seperate, community run project. Whatever the original intentions were, that's certainly not the case anymore today. Now, Ubuntu is a Canonical project that happens to have a large community, rather than being a community project that has corporate backing as it was originally portrayed.

The lack of autonomy in the community and the forced decisions by Canonical over the past few releases show that it's not a community project anymore. There's not necessarily something evil or bad about it, it's just the way it is. If you want a real community-based distribution, there's Debian.

Personally I find the concept of a community manager that does little more than promote Canonical's products a bit condescending.

I now run Debian on my personal machines and I doubt I'll make a full-time switch to Ubuntu again. Having said that, I still happily contribute to Edubuntu and I'm happy for people to use Ubuntu. Despite it's problems it's still a great Debian derivative and it's a very important and relevant part of the Debian eco-system. It's also important for Canonical to succeed so that one day we can deploy Ubuntu servers and have certification for the big ugly stuff like Oracle, SAP, etc.

My 2c :)

26. Banshee Developer [28/02/2011@16:01]

Above, @Meneer R claims that the Banshee developers agreed to this "new offer".

There was no agreement.

The Banshee developers were told on the phone "This is the way it is going to be".

27. Sean Tilley [28/02/2011@16:19]

I've been really disappointed with Canonical about this. It completely goes against the idea of collaborating in the FOSS community. Really, for the last year or so, it's seemed like one bad decision from Shuttleworth after another. I think this is going to be one of those "last straws" that makes me end up fully making the switch to something like Fedora.

28. nmarques [28/02/2011@16:30]

Vincent,

I agree with what you wrote from a 'ecosystem ethics' point of view. From a management point of view, there's a strong coalition between Ubuntu One and Amazon stores, as they are competitors (a service or product that replaces totally or partially another). Ubuntu has it's own merit on achieving the overwhelming user base they have. They dared to attack what many called a 'niche' of the industry, and they got the attention of the end users. Why would they want to kill Ubuntu One by running a competitor service to their own? Doesn't make sense to me, specially when they have a stronger user base than any other.

If I was Canonical, I would just play it a different way, at the end of every tax year I would donate the same ammount that Amazon Store generated to GNOME and disable it in favor of Ubuntu One. Practical case: GNOME gets 20K's from Amazon fees, Canonical would donate 20K's to GNOME. Sounds to me the fairest way of doing this protecting everyones interests, because deep in the end, we're talking about revenue that comes from Ubuntu users, people that Canonical and Ubuntu strive to keep loyal to them, and in many cases the same kind of people that other distro's never care, and there are many public statements about distro's not targeting 'normal users'.

A more 'ethical' path towards the ecosystem that feeds Ubuntu would be nice, but at the same time, have you ever heard:

"All is fair in love and war"

This is not a 'war' in the traditional way, but everything involving business is a war. I'm not defending Canonical, I'm just stating that this kind of stuff happens everyday all over the world and it's normal practice in the traditional distribution branches of any economy, specially with companies that answer before share holders. Money has to generate more money, else it's sold or dismembered and shut down.

Maybe we should attack the current financial system and capitalism itself and not the agents that act under their rules.

29. Not Leonardo Di Caprio [28/02/2011@16:50]

Yeah, this whole thing stinks like cat's poop. I find Jonathan Carter's comment above very relevant, and would like to go a step further, if I may: guys, go on and fork Ubuntu! Seriously, it's not what it was advertised at its outset. I've switched to Debian for that some time ago, and would never turn back. But people still caring for this distribution should seriously think about forking it, rather than leaving it in greedy corporate hands. They're spoiling a great potential: the potential spawning from a great community. Down with Canonical!

30. sadig [28/02/2011@17:10]

@Vincent:

Do you have any reference that Ubuntu is not Canonicals Product?
Just because "community driven" doesn't mean, that Canonical as main sponsor is not the product owner.

Regarding all brands and trademarks, it really looks like that Ubuntu is indeed a product of Canonical.

The same goes for Fedora and RedHat and OpenSuSE and Novell.

I just don't believe that even "free" (as in free beer) distros are not somehow related to their main sponsors.

Regards,

\sh

31. Vincent [28/02/2011@17:20]

@sadig: That's a good point. I actually don't have any reference about that: it's just my expectation, and maybe I'm wrong here. I'd love to know what's the official word on this. I would think that most people have the same expectation, though, and I believe a lot of the communication around Ubuntu instills this idea.

I can't tell for Fedora, but while openSUSE used to be a Novell product, the openSUSE community is aggressively changing this, and is even working on the creation of an openSUSE Foundation.

32. nnonix [28/02/2011@17:26]

"but you're just another normal company that is first going after money"

Going after money first? You're missing the reality that Canonical has been "keeping the lights on" at the Ubuntu project form the start. The entire infrastructure for Ubuntu AND some upstream infrastructure has been provided by Canonical and it all costs money. You have no problem with that (or you'd be blogging about it). God forbid they (Canonical) eventually try to stop bleeding money and make Ubuntu sustain itself.

It's easy to be an idealists when you have no responsibility for balancing the check book.

33. Nirbheek [28/02/2011@17:45]

@planet ubuntu reader: As far as I know, Canonical is not a publicly trading company. As such it does not have stockholders.

34. migueleonm [28/02/2011@18:19]

@nnonix exactly. People usually don't know about the money invested. I'm agree, maybe another deal is better, something like 75%/25% gnome/canonical for amazon plugin because gnome is a big part of ubuntu but without an important income canonical could dissapear and that will be very vey bad for linux community believe or not, no matter if you use debian, fedora, arch or any other distro.

35. Adam Williamson [28/02/2011@18:25]

Nirbheek: that's a common misconception. Actually, many (probably most) private companies do have stock holders; that ownership of the company is not publicly traded does not mean it's not divided or traded. The fact that the company is private simply means that the general public doesn't get to know the ownership structure.

As an example, it's widely known that Facebook is jointly held, with many of its staff owning shares of the company. They're just not publicly-traded shares.

36. mpt [28/02/2011@20:04]

“Also the Banshee project should forbid Ubuntu to use the word/trademark ‘Banshee’. Ubuntu should make the program available under a different name.”

That’s what Mozilla does with Firefox — but only to maintain the reputation of the product, not to preserve their revenue stream. Unlike the people who have raised a ruckus about Banshee, Mozilla has no objection when Ubuntu changes Firefox’s home page and search providers to earn revenue to fund Ubuntu development.

More importantly, Mozilla has enough marketing clout to make “Firefox” a name worth preserving. If Ubuntu had to rename Firefox to something else, that would make Ubuntu less attractive to users. But if we had to rename Banshee to something else, that would, if anything, make Ubuntu more attractive to users.

If you want to profit from default settings, be the distributor.

If you want to profit from a trademark, make your brand valuable.

37. Jef Spaleta [28/02/2011@21:10]

@mpt,
So if changing the name would have been more attractive... why did Canonical not do that as well? You just said it was to Canonical's own interests to change the name of the application..and well within the rights to do so. So why didn't Canonical just go ahead and change the name? That would be entirely self-consistent behaviour.

Perhaps because they felt a pang of ethical responsibility to keep the project name the same as what upstream desired to call? Could it be that Canonical does in fact understand the different between legal and ethical...sometimes.

-jef

38. gnokii [28/02/2011@21:12]

We have the same opinion on that, I wrote also last week about it. I begun my article with a sentence, that the fanboys now would beginning spamming my blog and what should I say it happend. I am aggregated to the planet of ubuntuusers, and got comments it would be not allowed to make "ubuntu bashing" entries there.
But I got also many comments that, they think its not so good what Canonical doing there.

It's not about the right to change the code, its not that Canonical is a company and have to earn money it's about they deserve 75% of the money for her work. I think, they would deserve more the 25% part ;)

39. mpt [28/02/2011@21:44]

@Jef Spaleta: You are mistaken. I didn’t mention Canonical at all.

40. Jef Spaleta [28/02/2011@21:59]

@mpt,

Indeed you did not... but the decision in question...the Banshee revenue sharing unilateral decision was _not_ made by the Ubuntu community nor any of its publicly facing governance. So the question is..why didn't you mention Canonical? Why did you attempt to change the discussion into one about _Ubuntu_ when the problem lies with how _Canonical_ is making unilateral decisions.

As a Canonical employee, stop wrapping yourself in the cloth of community when people point to failings in your employer's own _corporate_ culture. Stop standing behind the human shield of Ubuntu to protect an out-of-step corporate culture. Stop hiding on the holy ground of community to avoid return fire when Canonical makes a strategic decisions which is seen as damaging.

-jef

41. Joel P [01/03/2011@00:17]

I'm OK with the outcome as such. Though the numbers seem a bit skewered, at least people have the choice of uninstalling and building a pure Banshee from source. I don't use the store so it really doesn't worry me but I think Canonical should take a decent chunk of the revenue since they're promoting it and distributing it in the "arguably" most popular desktop Linux distro.

Just my two cents.

42. Paul McGarry [01/03/2011@00:29]

"I thought you understood the spirit of Free Software"

As I understand it the spirit of Free Software is that of freeing people from being restricted by and beholden to the wishes of others?

If anyone is operating counter to the spirit of Free Software I would argue it is those seeking to restrict Canonical based on their own personal wishes for a particular piece of code.

Perhaps there are some other "community" mores in play here (and those may well be worth discussing) but I think it is a big mistake to pretend those mores relate to "Free Software". "Free Software" is all about Freedom. It is about not being restricted. Nothing Canonical is doing in this instance could be seen to run counter to Free Software ideals that because they are not adding any restrictions.

"but going against the will of the developers is definitely wrong"

Going against the will of the developers is the precise reason "Free Software" exists. I cannot see how someone who claims to value "the spirit of Free Software" can logically argue that there is something "wrong" in exercising the very freedom that is Free Software's core principle.

Canonical has not handled the situation well, they should have had a more considered position and approach to better manage community expectations. I do not think the choice they have made is in any way wrong but I think they have communicated badly.

43. mpt [01/03/2011@01:13]

@Jef Spaleta: Why didn’t I mention Canonical? Because it wasn’t relevant to my point about open source revenue models, which this is an example of. Any “attempt to change the discussion” exists only in your imagination. And fix your metaphor tank, it’s leaking.

44. Jef Spaleta [01/03/2011@01:27]

@mpt
Canonical's unilateral decision-making with regard to the revenue split as a yet-to-be-profitable for-profit company isn't relevant? Really? Really!?!

-jef

45. mpt [01/03/2011@02:00]

@Jef Spaleta: Really. If you don’t believe me, try reading it. :-)

46. cyrildz [01/03/2011@02:19]

I'm very disappointed about the reaction against Canonical.
Who support Ubuntu ? it is Canonical, Just see what appended to mandriva, if Canonical fails so will Ubuntu too. Some time ago, we feared that Canonical was not profitable, we had fear for Ubuntu.
why should not Canonical makes profit ? Who pay developers to work full time on Ubuntu ? where does the money come to pay those developers ?
The one who talked about the importance of Banshee for Ubuntu : I tried Banshee some time ago and it was not that good, , not that I'm shooting on the banshee developers, but since Natty announcing, Banshee radically improves itself. If you so much love Gnome, just make a don to Gnome, don't wait for someone else to bring money for gnome.
If it was unfair, Banshee developers could have simply said "No, we don't agree" and stepping back from Ubuntu
That is why Open Source have difficulties

47. Ding dong [01/03/2011@03:31]

Cyrilldz,

Canonical has been funded from the beginning by a billionaire.

Canonical funded an intensive marketing and distribution campaign around the globe that basically amounted to "dumping" to drive the smaller competitors out of the space.

Mandriva was just another one of the victims. Mandriva could not compete with "free".

48. Tachyon Feathertail [01/03/2011@03:44]

@planet ubuntu reader:

So what you're saying is that we're all supporting an organization that's systemically incapable of not screwing people over. Alrighty then.

49. zenwalker [01/03/2011@04:30]

I agree with your article. Infact canonical should have accepted for 25% revenue for them and remaining for Gnome. Bad move!

50. Kalle Vahlman [01/03/2011@06:51]

While I agree that Canonical is not exactly playing this nice, I find it a bit silly to bicker about money in the free software world. Specially in cases where there are no attempts to avoid someone taking advantage of it, like Canonical now has.

Despite the community sugar-coating, Ubuntu really is Canonical's product. Even the "About Ubuntu" page states that "The governance of Ubuntu is somewhat independent of Canonical ...", making only a slight attempt at claiming open governance.

So you got the "somewhat independent" 25% of revenue to GF, which is far more than what some other, more greedy packagers might take. If you consider that in the POV of business side of IT, that's not bad at all.

But as said, the way they did this sucked. They should have told just upfront that "we're giving you 25% of the revenue", and all this would have been a less of a deal.

51. sadig [01/03/2011@07:39]

@Vincent:

I'm just asking.

But even when some people are changing the body of the government behind a project, it doesn't mean that they are "free to do what they want to do". Novell (or whoever will takeover the opensuse project as main sponsor) will try to do the same, that the QA base is a big one, and you can do a good QA with a lot of testers throwing free stuff to their feet.

An old Fart stinking of Rants and Reality ;)

\sh

52. sadig [01/03/2011@07:46]

@Ding dong:

Sorry, but Mandrake/Mandriva had just the wrong business plan...they had an idea, they started off as french SuSE counterpart and they lost.
This has nothing to do with Canonical or any other company.

If you want to blame someone for the death of Mandrake/Mandriva, blame the bosses and the stupid managers.

Linux and Open Source is business, real business, hard business with dead bodies left and right the streets, not sandbox business. Many people at (formerly named) SuSE GmbH/AG learned that lesson, RedHat learned it too and other companies had, have or will have to learn it. This is our market, this is how it works. "Shoot First, before someone else is shooting you.", this should be the standard equasion in Business.

53. sadig [01/03/2011@12:28]

@Vincent:

As a coincidence, Mark wrote today on his blog: (http://www.markshuttleworth.com/arc...):
"...But that doesn’t diminish the substantial investment made by Canonical in a product that is in turn made available free of charge to millions of users and developers."

Regards,
\sh

54. Cyrildz [01/03/2011@13:32]

Ding Dong,
mandriva was simply not profitable, they hadn't no good business plan, it is not the Canonical's fault. don't mix thing up.
Canonical has many time supported Gnome by making Don.
we should stop being egoist, Ubuntu is made free of charge, I recall in 2006, I was in country(africa) and I received a CD free charge, Today, recently (2010) I received again a CD free of charge, where is the money coming from ? No one would invest its money for nothing, Canonical ( Mark) could have take his money and go to party or just travelling around the world with his Familly instead of financing Canonical(Ubuntu). we have nothing. What we would do if Ubuntu was not free of charge ?

55. opensourcenovice [01/03/2011@14:19]

Not sure if I understand that correctly:
Banshee is developed under a license that explicitly allows to change the program (in any way) and also to sell the program (if you can). It is allowed to build commercial products from Banshee - without asking for permission or anything similar.
Isn't that what Canonical is doing?
If Banshee allows this, what is are all the people actually complaining about?

As far as I know, the "bad commercial" company Canonical, with it's evil founder did not make any money out of their product, Ubuntu. They just try to become a self-sustained Linux-distribution for non-commercial users.
Did I miss something?

56. Jimbo [01/03/2011@14:38]

What I find interesting here is no one takes into account Canonical may not be able to disclose what it gives back due to legal requirements? I'm fairly certain that Canonical provides far more $$ than anyone will ever know (because of non-disclosure requirements). If you are concerned with the four figure (somewhere around US$3200 in 9 months) that Banshee has given to the GNOME Foundation then consider that Canonical will likely give back that amount in the first month. Canonical just cannot disclose it.

What did Novell provide to Banshee? The community? You? A BIG FAT 0. Nothing. Nada.

Please. Open your mind. The only reason there is backlash at Canonical is because they are so very successful. I think what Canonical has done is a great thing for many key open source communities. What is unfortunate is no one will truly be able to "see" what Canonical provides for many reasons including closed mindedness, legal ramifications, and inconsistent use of email addresses to name a few.

57. Baptiste Mille-Mathias [01/03/2011@15:57]

@Jimbo:
"What did Novell provide to Banshee? The community? You? A BIG FAT 0. Nothing. Nada."

… appart just paying developpers to code on it since … humm 2005, I see nothing; yeah you're so true :).

58. TGM [01/03/2011@20:10]

Just to comment... I disagree with this and I imagine someone out there will disagree enough to release a PPA with 'Vanilla' Banshee.

59. aussiebear [02/03/2011@02:33]

planet ubuntu reader said: "Primary responsibility of any company is to its shareholders. Open source or not, a company's primary motivation is to turn a profit."

I don't know who introduced this nonsensical concept or if it was just forgotten over time...BUT, a company is supposed to be about producing a quality service or product for people to use. Their reward for this effort is profit, customer loyalty, and a long future ahead.

The moment you focus on money or shareholders as the primary objective; is the moment you plan the seed for your own downfall in the long term.

I don't like what Canonical has done. As such...
=> *Downloads Debian net-install CD. Backing-up system. Plans to wipe out Ubuntu installation*

60. Greg [02/03/2011@11:41]

Hi Vince (i dont know if people actually call you that :) )
On an offtopic note i wanted to say, regarding the "Releasing Banshee as free software doesn't mean Banshee developers don't care about how their software is changed or used" paraagraph, illustrates there reasons i dislike the GPL as a license.
The GPL is a license written to protect you from evil entities, someone might say much like Canonical.
Regading banshee i would like to say 2 things.
The first is that Canonical should work hard on improving its offered services. When was the last time you actually read/heard about improvements on the Ubuntu One store?
Personally i dont remember when that was.

And number two. The most serious mistake Canonical did was to offer the option to the Banshee developers to play the game their way, let all money go to GNOME, but disable the plugin by the default.
That was a HUGE mistake and the obvious choice for the Banshee developers.
Canonical, realising that they wouldnt get anything out of the deal, is what brought the "unilateral decision" which is only beneficial to them.
You illustrate both those points at your blog post, especially the second.

61. Vincent [02/03/2011@13:09]

@Paul McGarry: actually, free software does come with restrictions. If you take the GPL for example, there are explicit restrictions to guarantee the freedom of the code. In my opinion, what you're saying in your comment applies more to open source than to free software, and that's a big difference for many.

62. Vincent [02/03/2011@13:13]

@cyrildz: Banshee radically improving since it was announced to be the default player in Natty is, in my opinion, not related to the fact that it would be included in Natty by default. It's simply that the Banshee developers kept doing a great job. It'd probably be interesting to see how many of the improvements you like were contributed by people who were not Banshee developers before the announcement...

And I've never ever said that Canonical should not make any profit. I wish Canonical the best, especially as I've friends working there. But that doesn't mean I should agree with all decisions Canonical takes to make profits.

63. Vincent [02/03/2011@13:16]

@sadig: I seriously doubt Novell will try to do the same within openSUSE. If something like this ever happens for openSUSE, then:

a) this will be discussed with banshee developers to see what they like
b) money would go to the openSUSE Foundation (which is being created), and not to a sponsor of openSUSE

64. Vincent [02/03/2011@13:18]

@opensourcenovice: I think you missed my whole post, yes :-) Nobody is arguing that it's not legal.

65. Vincent [02/03/2011@13:24]

@Jimbo: the GNOME Foundation will disclose how much money is received by Canonical through this, I guess. So we will possibly know how much money this represents.

You seem to assume the GNOME Foundation will make more money this way, but you missed my point about "No, a 75%/25% deal is not necessarily a better deal for the GNOME Foundation, money-wise" (and the following point). Please read it again.

As to what Novell contributed to Banshee: first, I don't see why you're talking about Novell here (is my employer relevant? I don't think so, that was my personal opinion), and second, clearly, you didn't look at who contributed code to Banshee ;-)

As to what I contributed to Banshee: I think nothing. I still believe I have the right to express my feeling when I believe something is wrong. Zonker explained this at http://lwn.net/Articles/428308/ Or do you think I can't say I'm unhappy about some random dictator killing people in his country because I'm not involved in actively fighting this dictator? (And no, I'm not comparing Canonical to a dictator killing people.)

66. Daniel [02/03/2011@13:27]

Canonical is a profit-driven company. This will, in some cases, put it at odds with the volunteer-driven community. In this case I think Gnome should be happy that Canonical wanted to share revenue at all. The Banshee team will get 25% of the revenue either if the user choose the Ubuntu One Store or the Amazon Mp3 Store. How is that not a generous deal?

Would Apple had done the same? Or TiVo or SonyEricson? Heck most companies that use open software in their products wouldn't had given a dime. Is it bad that communication between Ubuntu and Canonical in this matter sucked monkey-balls? Yes. Does it make them Satan's evil helpers and the enemies of the whole free software world? No!

Sometimes I wonder why OSS hasn't made a bigger impact on the desktop market. Then these little "kinder-garden fights" reminds me. The community is niggle as hell.

67. r_a_trip [02/03/2011@14:04]

To all the people not understanding the backlash...

This is all the community marketing fluff from Canonical coming back to bite them. There is very little community-anything about Ubuntu. The governance page on Ubuntu makes this pretty clear. The one running the show is Mark S.

If Canonical would have been honest and open from the start about where they come from, all this hubbub wouldn't have come along. But Canonical chose to use "community smoke and mirrors" to pull the wool over less critical people's eyes. Now, whenever the corporate teeth show from behind the sheeps clothing, people feel uneasy being confronted with the true nature of the Ubuntu Operating System product.

That and the fact that in this case diverting the affiliate revenuestream is akin to dipping into a charity fund. Gnome may not be carrying as much weight as a cause as fighting cancer or saving children, but still, Gnome provides a usable free(dom) desktop to many people worldwide.

68. Regala [02/03/2011@14:11]

@Daniel: please, refrain from talking about what you clearly don't know. You clearly miss the point where Canonical made a deal with some people, and then unilaterally did what they BOTH agreed NOT to do. And the fact that Canonical NEVER contributed to Banshee should warrant at least this completely nonsensical and insulting 75/25 ... distributing it in Ubuntu is no contributing. The problem is not the money. It's about trust, trust Canonical pummeled when not backing their own WORD. How did they expect the Banshee developers to react ? you are nuts to state it is a communication problem: they made a deal, and then realizing it was not as profitable as they thought, they denied the deal unilaterally. What don't you grasp in this ?

69. vadi2 [02/03/2011@22:14]

I'm a Ubuntu-only user (Fedora just doesn't cut in quality) for me and a GNOME supported (friend plan). What do I do now, cancel it?

I wonder how many of the people arguing are also using Macs. You know, paying huge sums to Apple but squabbling over the few pennies in open-source projects.

70. aikiwolfie [03/03/2011@23:23]

I don't see what the problem is here. The Gnome Foundation which seems to have been heavily infiltrated by Novell and Mono boosters gets a new revenue stream in the form of 25% of Ubuntu One music store sales as well as 25% of the Amazon music store sales. That seems like a pretty good deal considering Canonical has potentially opened it's self to patent litigation by using Banshee and also considering that Ubuntu is currently the most popular desktop Linux distribution.

It seems to me this is a win win for the Gnome Foundation, Banshee, Novell and Microsoft.

71. Lea [12/03/2011@18:10]

I agree that this sucks.

However...

There's a difference between being nice and being forced to be nice. Donating money to GNOME is to be nice. It's a good and honoured thing to do. But if we don't respect peoples and companies will to not be nice when they don't need to then the people that used to say that free and open source was communism wins.

72. Pawlo [14/03/2011@09:11]

You don't support Free software trough gnome foundation, because gnome foundation supports ms ooxml and ms mono. Banshee is made using mono, so you support ms and novell. Noticing how slowly gnome apps evolve I wouldn't give them a broken cent.

73. Vincent [14/03/2011@09:32]

@Pawlo: the GNOME Foundation doesn't "support" OOXML. We joined ECMA as a non-voting member to make sure the OOXML format would be documented as best as possible; by joining ECMA, we got the option to ask for extra information or clarifications. This is something that one of our community members was doing before we joined ECMA, and would have had to stop if we didn't join ECMA because he moved to another job.

This doesn't mean we prefer OOXML over ODF, or anything else. It just means we thought it'd be more helpful in the long term that this format that people will have to use is correctly documented.

As for mono, the GNOME community is happy to let developers write applications in the language they prefer (C, C++, python, js, perl, scheme, java, vala, etc. and yes, C#). This doesn't mean we recommend that they should use mono or C#. On the contrary, if you look at what we have in GNOME, most apps are written in C or python, with js becoming quite popular too nowadays. Of course, if your point is that we don't say "mono is evil", then yes, we don't say it because we think it's up to developers to use what they feel most comfortable with.

74. Pawlo [14/03/2011@21:28]

@Vincent

In this case help in documenting ms ooxml was equal to supporting it, because KDE and FSF made a clear statements against it. The main problem with mono is that you're letting Icaza to advertise it at planet gnome. Icaza's a microsoft employer and he lobbies against ms products like mono and silverlight. This puts planet gnome and novell (from the obvious reason) in a bad light.

75. bturrie [20/03/2011@15:40]

@aussiebear: This strikes me as a quibble about ends and means (which are which). A company needs to provide a product that a market wants and works well enough to be respected in the market (i.e. bought/used). In general it's nice, but not absolutely necessary, to be respected as a company (Microsoft, BP, etc. come to my mind here). A company also has to make a profit, if they don't the investors will eventually withdraw their funds and liquidate the business. I'm not at all confident Ubuntu would survive such a liquidation. I'm inclined to bet not.

I think what we're seeing here is that Cononical is struggling to find a business model that will work for them. They may be and should be in survival mode. One big problem they have is they also depend upon lots of volunteer effort which can/will be withdrawn if they lose the respect of their volunteers. How to avoid that and still make a profit or at least break even is a difficult problem.

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Monday 28 February 2011

Canonical, you're breaking my heart

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by Vincent