Hmm, I wonder why so few make their opinions heard here, especially from the
more prominent community members?
Am Samstag, 20. Februar 2010 17:35:49 schrieb Jeff Mitchell:
On 2/20/2010 9:46 AM, Martin Schlander wrote:
I don't think you mentioned if Amarok have a
policy for such a thing -
would you guys ever integrate it into "mainline" Amarok? .. of course an
opt-in 3rd party script is a different matter.
It could be, if the API is open, which I would imagine it is (somewhat)
as the source code is open. But there's no reason for us to do it if all
that happens is it makes Canonical money, and that Amarok gets no
benefit from it. Canonical could pay someone to do some bespoke
development to get it in Amarok (they won't), at which point we may or
may not accept it upstream.
So far our policy for music stores has been pretty strict: they must
allow full-length previews, they must allow tracks that have been
purchased to be redownloaded at any time, and they must allow tracks to
be purchased in a free format (which could be in addition to a non-free
format). If there is money to be made by changing some of these policies
(like nearly every open source project we could always use more money)
then maybe there's reason to consider revising it -- but without some
profit-sharing from the UOMS there's not much reason for us to do so.
Revising this policy may get some anger from those music stores that
have taken a chance on free software and free formats and have either
been integrated or want to be integrated into some of these players. And
I wouldn't blame them. So even with profit-sharing, it may be a no-go.
(This doesn't mean it couldn't be provided as a plugin, instead of
living in our source tree.)
Aren't most plugins meant to be shared over the gethotnewstuff framework
anyway? Do they have policies about what they include and what not?
So if you make GHNS an integral part of plugin distribution how do you handle
that?
openSUSE
doesn't have mp3 support (fluendo+gstreamer) out of the box
anymore does it? That would be one major problem - since I assume the
Ubuntu store wouldn't sell OGG Vorbis or Flac - or perhaps even wav?
As far as anybody currently knows/guesses, the UOMS is really just a
front for Amazon's MP3 store, and will carry MP3s. Maybe this will
change or is wrong, but remarks Canonical has made in the past suggest
it. Amazon also has their (DRMed) video-on-demand service and there's no
reason to think that Canonical wouldn't want a piece of that pie too.
Remember that Ubuntu is by far the most popular "switch" distro for
people switching to Linux from Windows. Many of those people may not
really care about open formats or even open source, as opposed to a
platform where they aren't infected with viruses every three days. That
may be Canonical's real target.
Many people also enjoy using iTunes, and Canonical doesn't rank below Apple in
my books yet, so if they cater to these people I don't really see a problem,
but as you outlined, no reason to help them do this.
It would also
be a bit problematic to promote and support a competitor of
openSUSE.
So I'd say Ubuntu music store should be a no-go - unless it provides a
significant advantage over other options that I'm not aware of.
But generally speaking I wouldn't mind it if openSUSE shipped integration
with a for-profit, non free software/free culture related music store -
as long as it offered music in formats supported by openSUSE out of the
box, without DRM and doesn't belong to a competitor of openSUSE.
Check out the Magnatune stores in Amarok and Rhythmbox :-)
I agree with Martin and you here, if it's a free culture oriented store I
don't mind shipping it and supporting it that way.
But that Ubuntu One Store thing should stay outside of Banshee / Amarok in the
main opensuse distribution, even if added to the main source, which I doubt is
going to happen unless ubuntu starts contributing big time to banshee.
I wonder about our contrib repository though, the policies there are pretty
wide except patent covered stuff.
Karsten
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