An Epiphany Of Loons

(Link lifted from .Net Jerkface: URLs Just Want To Be Free!)

Here’s an interesting one for you:

Canonical is desperately searching around for a way of paying the rent. Canonical is a big, big ole FOSS totem.

Banshee (built on Mono, but that would just confuse matters) is a FOSS project that’s doing quite nicely, thank you, and just needs a bit of funding.

The two get together (in business it’s called a strategic alliance, but the Loons don’t deal in strategy because it’s too long-term. Actually, even tactics make their heads hurt) and, after much argument, come up with a deal whereby one (Canonical) gets 75% of the vig and the other (Banshee) gets 25%. And lest you think this is X% of chicken-feed, it includes the revenues from Amazon off the Ubuntu platform.

Well, OK, that might still be chicken-feed, but still. It’s a win-win for both parties, as far as I can tell.

But suddenly the reality of the business world hits these nitwits full in the face, and they come up with comments like this:

It certainly sheds light on how Canonical does business (aggressively and not exactly out in the open). I’m not terribly comfortable with any of this.

As opposed to passively and by stripping naked in the town square, I suppose. Well, that’s not all that comfortable, either.

I’ve made this same mistake myself — many times, no doubt — when I’ve credited Distribution X for fixing Bug Y when that problem was really addressed by Project Z. It’s hard to know who fixed what, who’s responsible for what, and who’s just packaging something up and offering it to users.

And I feel for Steven. I, too, spend much of my day trying to credit the right person for solving a bug. That, in a sense, is what the modern computing experience is all about, isn’t it?

I don’t want to get all Jono Bacon on your collective asses (and this is much harder given Jono’s relationship with Canonical; I continue to respect him but don’t envy him one little bit)...

Jono Bacon? Give me a break. One more creep in the menagerie.

... but it’s about respect, open decision-making, and realizing that if something smells from afar, it probably stinks pretty good up close.

Respeck! Now I understand what the Loons are all about. It’s a basement gang who’d like to bully the 'hood, except that they don’t have knives and have been warned off running with scissors by Mummy.

There seem to be a series of these nasty commercial surprises coming down the pipeline at Loons, and they will be worth watching … in the same way as one watches a train crash. A combination of unstoppable momentum and brutal ignorance is a wonderful thing to see.

(Oh, and for once the comments really are golden. There are only four of them, but they all make sense. More sense than I have, quite possibly.)