openSUSE 11.4 and Banshee: Amazon MP3
Great news! openSUSE 11.4 was just released, and it's loaded with goodies! I am of course most excited about the inclusion of Banshee 1.9.3 with full Amazon MP3 store support included out of the box.
An Open Proposal to Canonical
Firstly, this post is a personal one. I am not speaking on behalf of the Banshee community, any corporation, foundation, or my maintainer peers.
Changing Roles
About 6 years ago I started working for Novell to develop Banshee into much of what it has become today. I'm quite fond its evolution, but perhaps more proud of its community. As is likely obvious, I have not been too technically involved with Banshee over the past year. The last major thing I developed to production was the Amazon MP3 store integration and downloader, which was over the summer of 2010 (and is currently bringing in a respectable amount of revenue to the GNOME foundation!); yet Banshee has kept on growing - at a fantastic and exciting rate. This is all thanks to the numerous people actively and passionately involved in the project.
Banshee, GNOME, & Amazon MP3
During Gabriel's talk at GUADEC, after working with members of the GNOME Foundation board, we were very excited to announce that the Amazon MP3 Store in Banshee would begin using an Amazon Affiliate ID, and that 100% of all revenue generated through this affiliate ID will go to the GNOME Foundation!
Announcing Banshee 1.7.3
We're very proud to announce the release of Banshee 1.7.3, which brings some much anticipated WebKit goodness: the Amazon MP3 Store and the Miro Podcast Directory integration. Amazon MP3 downloading is fully supported, separate from the integrated store itself. There are also a handful of other smaller new features and enhancements, and a good deal of bug fixing as well.
Tarballs - Why?
More and more I begin to wonder why we generate tarballs at all these days. Is it just because it's easy - a function of "make distcheck"? There's certainly value in the actual distcheck process to ensure you have a sane build, but why actually distribute the tarball? What's the meaningful difference between a tarball and a git tag?
Amazon MP3 Store in Banshee
I've landed a new extension in Banshee -- an integrated Amazon MP3 Store source. This source allows you to browse, search, preview, purchase, and download music from the Amazon MP3 web site.
Banshee + GNOME 3.0
I spent a little time this weekend doing one of the things I've wanted to do for years - eradicate one of the oldest files in Banshee: banshee-dialogs.glade.
Banshee Grid View
Spread out over a number of hours over the last few weeks I've been working on making our high-performance list view in Banshee also handle grid-style layouts.