Summary: Bar/excepting disc space constraints, Canonical intends to replace Rhythmbox in the next version of the very ubiquitous "Ubuntu" distribution, adding to it components that are explicitly excluded from Microsoft's Community Promise

THE ROCKY LOVE affair of Banshee and Ubuntu goes a long way back and we wrote about it in posts such as:

• Ubuntu Users Plead to Keep Novell's Banshee Out (and Other Miscellaneous Mono News)
• Microsoft-funded Media Player to Become Ubuntu's Default?
• Mono Warning: Fresh Attempts to Inject Banshee Into Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10
• Novell/Microsoft Mono Poison (Banshee) Put in Ubuntu 10.10 NBE by Default
• Patent Threat Banshee Gets Hooks Into Ubuntu 10.10
• Banshee is Novell, Mono, and 'Forbidden' Microsoft Software Patents
• OpenSUSE 11.3 Users Sensitive to Microsoft Lawsuit Due to Banshee Bundling
• Fedora 13 Replaces F-Spot (Mono) With Shotwell (Vala), MeeGo Still Mono Encumbered

OMG!Ubuntu asks: "Which would you choose as default: Banshee or Rhythmbox?"

"So much for the vote they had yesterday," wrote gnubie in our main IRC channel as s/he pointed to this news from the same site which says that "Banshee becomes Ubuntu 11.04 default music player" (the comments talk about Mono).

The news headline cannot be confirmed by Webupd8, which is another popular information resource that's focused on Ubuntu and says:

- Banshee might be included by default in Ubuntu 11.04 (and thus replace Rhythmbox) if it can be slimmed down to fit on the CD

Compare this to the statement from OMG!Ubuntu, which says: "Banshee is to be the default music player in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal – providing issues with disc space can be overcome."

By making Mono unavailable by default in Ubuntu a lot of disc space would be saved. But there are other issues or noteworthy factors here, notably the Microsoft APIs and the fact that Banshee contains parts of Mono that we know for a fact based on the Microsoft Community Promise (MCP) to be a patent trap.

Why does Canonical add software which Novell totally controls and Microsoft has power over? There are still some people out there who thank Novell for such gifts and even call Mono "great":

The Great

Mono -

I know Mono isn’t the most popular project in the open source community but working in the real world mono is one of the most important project Novell backs. The need to have C# programs work across multiple platforms has become very important. It finally blurs what operating system you need to run a program and given the choice of SUSE with Mono vs Microsoft Server with .Net from a cost prospective SUSE is the best route. Porting .NET applications to Mono isn’t that hard and any new applications written in Mono will work perfectly on Windows so there really is no reason not to use Mono to develop your .NET applications

The main goal here is to develop with Microsoft's API what could otherwise be achieved with Java for example. Mono is not a GNU/Linux project (it is about .NET) and it's risky. Now that the SCO-esque Microsoft sues many companies without prior provocation, Canonical would be wise to stay with Rhythmbox. ⬆

"I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue"

--Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist