Hi Everyone -

My name is Jason and I'm the new Ubuntu desktop manager at Canonical. Thought I would jump in and give my thoughts. It might be hard to field any follow-ups via a comment section so if anyone wants to comment offline, feel free to email me at jason.warner@ubuntu.com.

Others in the thread touched on many of the points, so bear with me if there is some repitition.

A main goal of Canonical in general and Ubuntu specifically is to deliver and awesome user experience. From the  installer and first desktop experience all the way through file syncing in the cloud. Banshee and content acquisition is another area we wanted to focus on deliver what we thought was an amazing user experience. Equally true with Ubuntu is choice. Banshee was always attractive as a default application because it delivered both. Combining the two on the default experience, an opinionated choice was made to deliver an overall experience consistent with the rest of Ubuntu. That does not, however, limit users ability to choose to use other services...it is simply a the default experience bourne out of a desire to deliver the best overall desktop to users.

As also noted, revenue sharing deals are common and Canonical has a history of cordially participating in mutually beneficial relationships with upstreams. This can be seen in the Firefox relationship as an example. While some may not like the exact parameters of the relationship, those parameters are really between Canonical and the various partners. Just like any relationship, there will be give and take and as long as everyone maturely approaches the situation, mutually beneficial arrangements usually evolve.

I think that last point is worth mentioning again. Canonical approached the Banshee team in good faith regarding a business opportunity. The Banshee team have responded on multiple accounts across different stories that they are happy with the conduct and discussions with Canonical.