Default Music Player in Ubuntu 12.04

[Iain Lane]

Hello,

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 05:14:46PM +1030, Jason Warner wrote:
> Hi Everyone -
> 
> Thank you all for sending feedback[1][2][3] on the default music player for
> 12.04. It is clear the right decision for 12.04 is to make Rhythmbox the
> default music player. Thank you, above all else, for keeping the
> conversation cordial and making the decision about what is best for Ubuntu.

Sorry, but it doesn't seem 'clear' to me. Please explain more.

More constructive would have been sound technicals argument that could
have been presented to upstream. Things they would have been able to
work on.

What is 'clear' though is that the default application selection process
should not work like this. I would like to see us learn lessons from
this situation so that our upstreams and users are treated with greater
respect. 

Most importantly, we need to be having more constant and constructive
dialogs with upstreams throughout the whole cycle and not just at
application selection time (actually in this case there has been very
poor communcation with upstream even since the discussion). Using the
promise of being on or threat of being removed from the install to
cudgel projects into the direction you want is not very satisfactory.

Chopping-and-changing doesn't do people any favours either. There should
be some commitment from Ubuntu; being the default app brings upstreams a
lot of users (which is great), but also increases the support and bug
workload (which is not so great).  If Ubuntu could be relied on more
then upstreams would not be so burdened.

PiTiVi was treated in a similar way a few months ago. It is sad that no
lessons were learned from that situation. Please do not let it happen
again. None of this should have come out of a UDS session. If there are
such serious issues then they should have been raised months ago.

> 
> [1] -
> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/11/banshee-tomboy-and-mono-dropped-from-ubuntu-12-04-cd/
> [2] -
> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Do-You-Want-Rhythmbox-or-Banshee-in-Ubuntu-12-04-233449.shtml

I don't think we should be relying on news media (especially hilariously
biased articles like the second) to be making decisions like this for
us.

> […]

Cheers,

-- 
Iain Lane                                  [ iain at orangesquash.org.uk ]
Debian Developer                                   [ laney at debian.org ]
Ubuntu Developer                                   [ laney at ubuntu.com ]
PhD student                                       [ ial at cs.nott.ac.uk ]
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