I ended up speaking with the upstream GRUB2 team (which has certainly lead to a strange alliance in one case) about Colin’s GSOC themes, and as it turns out, the main reason there’s no theme supplied with GRUB2 is that Colin’s themes use non-Free elements (proprietary fonts like Helvetica are used heavily). Since I had learnt the theme format to a basic degree in doing my Ubuntu theme, I proposed making a genuinely Free theme – starting with a Debian theme, and moving on to a generic “GRUB2″ theme afterwards.

As I went along, I found a handful of bugs and feature oddities, which have almost all been fixed with incredible turnaround by Vladimir Serbinenko, the current maintainer of the “gfxmenu” code (there remain some questions regarding RTL support in themes, and how to gracefully deal with different aspect ratios) – and I want to extend my thanks to him for his help. However, at this point in time, I’m pleased to announce a theme I’d consider ready for public consumption.

It’s obviously not perfect, and it uses the old visual style from Debian Lenny, but it’s a fully Free starting point, which hopefully can be deconstructed by others seeking to make their own themes. It ought to scale fully to any 4:3 resolution. And it may explode and eat your disk on any version of GRUB2 Experimental other than r1499. Generally, the README is a good starting point.

Oh yes, an URL. Try http://retro.apebox.org/grubthemes/

I’ve been speaking with some folks on deviantART regarding using their Debian-themed wallpaper in future releases of my themes package, but for now, this should be enough for gfxmenu to get a little more exposure and a little more testing. And, hopefully, shift artist focus back from the theme-incompatible BURG fork to the real GRUB2 project.

Definitely a fine use of your moneycash.

• Chicken Little Remix will no longer be updated. There will be no 10.04 from me.
• I will no longer be visiting certain websites, under any circumstances, courtesy of 127.0.0.1 entries in /etc/hosts. This includes sites such as Ubuntu Forums, some blogs, and some “news” sites.
• I will be blocking some people from Twitter, in order to avoid their @mentions from appearing to me.
• I may (this is undecided) opt to change my anything-goes policy regarding comments on my blog. Redacted comments will have their content deleted, to make it clear that a comment is redacted, not held in moderation

Some things, however, will NOT be changing.

• I will continue my efforts in Debian. In fact, these efforts will be redoubled.
• I will continue my efforts in Ubuntu. In fact, these efforts will be redoubled.
• I will maintain my existing IRC, Twitter, email & IM presence.
• I will, when the opportunity arises, combine sweet and savoury foods.

Thank you for your time.

Braaaaaaaak bok boooooook bok bok bkaaawk bok bok bok bok bok:

• Bok bok LiveCD
• Wallpaper bkawk bok bok
• Cluck cluck Gnote
• Booooooook bok Solang bok bok bok

Bok bok booooook Mininova:

4577800beda226d815f98bc8d79521cd  clr-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso
f97179e5b13f3aceb6c9d98d2c7e6ef5  clr-9.10-desktop-i386.iso

Bkaaawk bok bok bok boooooook bok braaawk bok bok booooook bok bok bok 10.04? Bok bok boook charity, bok bok videogames, braaaawk money.

Bok bok.

Now, once upon a time, the online functionality was mostly offered via a proprietary P2P-and-DRM-based system called Kontiki. Kontiki was unpopular for various reasons – for example, it was Windows-only, and banned by several Internet providers due to the use of P2P (e.g. I know such technology is still banned on the University of Oxford network). As a result, this lead to the introduction and eventual replacement of browser-based streaming solutions, starting with the changes made to BBC’s iPlayer. iPlayer is nowadays a combination of an Adobe Flash service for web surfers, an unencrypted MP4 streaming service for users of mobile devices such as iPhones, and as of a couple of weeks ago, has streaming support built directly into the PlayStation 3’s user interface too. Oh, and on the PC, it supports DRM-based downloading courtesy of the Adobe Air platform, on Windows, Mac, and Air-capable (x86) Linux. Channel 4’s service 4od, and Five’s Demand Five, are also based on Adobe Flash, and streaming-only. They’re basic and functional.

The final interesting one here is ITV’s ITV Player. ITV Player was, until about a week ago, the only non-Flash service, instead making use of Microsoft Silverlight. They have now changed to be Flash-based, like their peers, meaning the entire market mandates use of the Adobe Flash plugin – or, at a push, command-line utilities or browser plugins which grab the raw video files from the broadcasters’ servers, in violation of their licenses. Why is this interesting? Well, when ITV Player used Silverlight, we could watch TV using Free Software: Novell Moonlight 2.0 Beta 1.1 and above worked fine with it, on i386 and AMD64 (and other architectures with a recompile). Now that it’s using Flash rather than Silverlight, where do we stand for watching streaming TV legitimately with Free Software? Let’s take a peek!

Firstly, some preamble. I’m running Ubuntu Jaunty, and I hand-compiled a SVN (I think SVN? Maybe Bzr) snapshot of Gnash revision 11485 to ensure I had an up-to-date view of proceedings. It definitely seems to be working, as I’m introduced to the world of Flash advertising via Gnash, and Youtube.com also works, more or less. And I’m not discussing Adobe’s Flash plugin here, for various reasons:

• It’s proprietary. Boo.
• It’s i386-only in several instances – a beta of an AMD64 plugin exists, but your browser will crash on BBC iPlayer sites if you have the iPlayer Adobe Air app installed, as Air is i386-only. And the packages in Ubuntu install the i386 plugin alongside the abominable and crashy nsPluginWrapper.
• Did I mention it was proprietary? If the only way to surf the web on a Free OS is with proprietary software, then we’re not doing very well.

So, Gnash it is. Firstly, it’s a PITA to compile, as upstream seem to have misunderstood how AutoFoo works – i.e. it detects that you don’t have headers installed for certain features, and tells you so, yet still enables those features at configure-time (and obviously fails when building). Hey guys, if I don’t have qapplication.h, take the hint and disable KDE support for me like every other bloody app does. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

BBC iPlayer

Well, what does the landing look like?

BBC iPlayer Landing

Looks fine to me! Let’s try playing a show!

BBC iPlayer Playback

Oh. Um… Never mind, then. Seems iPlayer’s JavaScript to detect Flash presence doesn’t pick up on Gnash, and it bails out. Score so far: 0/1

Demand Five

Another former Kontiki partner, how do these guys fare?

Demand Five Landing

Hey, that looks pretty good to me! Perhaps we’re onto a winner this time?

Demand Five Playback

Poot. Gnash is definitely being invoked – see the context menu there – but it sure isn’t doing anything useful. Score: 0/2

Channel 4 4od

How do those hip cats at Channel 4 fare?

Channel 4 4od Landing

Hm… Gotta confess, not feeling too hopeful about this one…

Channel 4 4od Playback

Oh, well, even worse than iPlayer. What you folks might not recognise is the missing “Play” buttons which are supposed to be to the right of the program descriptions in that list of episodes. Presumably more Javascript/Flash interop failure. 0/3

ITV Player

Last, but not least, how does the newest entrant into Microsoft-free streaming fare?

ITV Player Landing

Now, now, in fairness, it’s always been this bad, even when they used Silverlight – weirdos that they are, ITV have always used Flash for their navigation, even when they used Silverlight for playback. The Flash-based navigation you (don’t) see here is barely any better even with the proprietary Flash plugin. What the proprietary plugin does NOT do, however, is consume the 750 or so meg of RAM that Gnash did when sat idle on this screen. I mean, that’s not a problem, that’s why I have 6 gig in here, but still, not wise on Wifey’s netbook.

ITV Player Playback

Oh. Well then. 0/4 it is.

So?

What annoys me here isn’t so much that nothing works. I’m used to there being temporary gaps in Free Software functionality, that’s pretty normal. But I’m greatly vexed that one of these four used to work on a Free platform, and now it doesn’t – and that places like UbuntuForums are filled with people celebrating that fact. Celebrating that ITV have stopped using the evil nasty Microsoft system which happened to have a functional Free replacement – and that they’ve now moved to a non-Microsoft system which mandates a proprietary plugin. It’s not the first time either – Major League Baseball in the USA used to use Silverlight for their HD streaming, and now they use a combination of Flash and a proprietary Windows-only extension to Flash to make it load WMV files – this is considered a victory. It really isn’t. We should NEVER be forced to use Proprietary software in order to surf the web – yet now we’ve gone from having access to 25% of the UK’s streaming TV services via Free Software to 0% of them, and people are happy about it.

So, I want you to think long and hard about this question, one which seems to get the oddball answer far too often: What is more important – promoting Free Software, or demoting Microsoft Corp?

Richard Stallman has four freedoms.

Debian has ten guidelines.

The OSI has ten guidelines too (but they’re different).

These are all fairly detailed, and to someone who doesn’t understand the idea, take a while to explain. There are subtleties and fine-grained issues which are important in a dictionary definition, but are unhelpful in a single headline item. So, here’s my Free Software definition, the big difference between it and proprietary apps – and it’s only one point long.

Consider the average computer user. They don’t really “like” their Windows experience, and Office does funny things to them at least weekly, but that’s just the way things are, right? Well, yes, and that’s the real value Free Software can offer:

When Free Software sucks, you can actually do something about it.

Windows is crap? Tough. Skype is crap? Tough. CoPilot Central 2.0 for Windows is worthless and crashes on startup? Tough. NVIDIA drivers getting you down? Tough. Not happy about the default wallpaper in Debian? Well there, my friend, you can do something about it! Everything else is just window dressing. Important? Sure. There’s license contamination and copyright assignment and blah blah blah…important, but boring. The simple, headline point to explain what Free Software is, and why you contribute to it, can be summed up in one simple sentence.

Imagine for a moment how much better software would be if every piece of impotent rage directed towards something proprietary could instead have something done about it… Every crash in Windows, every random X-server lockup courtesy of FGLRX, all of it comes down to what we can do. Hammer that core point home as hard as you can – you can always save explaining the GPL for another day. As a frustrated Windows user, consider how empowering the mere concept of being able to do something about your woes is. Just the ability to report bugs is novel for some folks wedded to “take what we give you and enjoy it” proprietary software.

For some, I’m sure this comes as a startling realization, and for others, it’s stating the obvious. However, the point needs to be reiterated – the “Mono War” as-is serves no practical purpose.

From my diamond-encrusted Microsoft-supplied throne, here is what I see when I survey the “War”:

• Immovable, entrenched, irreconcilable viewpoints amongst combatants
• A degree of outright lunacy exhibited by both sides – but (sorry) mostly by some on the “anti” side
• A willingness to canonize anyone with a matching viewpoint, rather than use of independent thought and research
• Demands from the “anti” side that they be obeyed
• Demands from the “pro” side that the “anti” side shut up and go away. With added smugness.
• No fear of bending, distorting, or even denying reality to support an opinion
• An embracing of collateral damage as long as the main goal is achieved

It is these points which I consider unproductive. Nobody is going to change their positions based on angry or smug blogging, nobody is going to drop everything to work on things for kids with entitlement complexes, and nobody is going to give up on their freedom to kick up a fuss.

So, here I come to save the day. You’re welcome. I’m going to give the “anti” folks some suggestions on how to wage a productive war, one with results rather than recrimination. I even took the first step myself, although it was hardly well covered in the media. I’ll get to that a little later.

Step 1: Accept that some people feel differently to you

I know this may be hard to stomach, but no matter how much you shout, no matter how many times you point to assorted legal submissions from the 1990s, no matter how many times you cite cases such as TomTom or Buffalo, nobody is going to take your arguments and change their behaviour. Some people simply don’t have the same scale of concern or fear as you. Accept this. Don’t attack people because they don’t see things the way you do, as it’ll only make their resolve stronger. Simply accept that they don’t agree. If it makes you feel better, write them off as stupid in your mind. Not that I ever do this for anyone. *cough*

Step 2: Understand why people do what they do

Not everybody contributes to Free Software for the same reasons – although by and large the biggest motivator is “to make it better for myself”. People package stuff they use themselves – or should damn well do if they expect package quality to be maintained. People write apps for themselves, they submit patches to add features or fix bugs for themselves, and so on. This is not the only motivator, but it’s the primary one. There is no ulterior motive – unless you consider “improving this for my own use” to be ulterior. Yes, that even includes the recent Hyper-V drivers – where it was in Microsoft’s interest (for selling Hyper-V to displace VMWare) to “contribute” according to the rules of Free Software contribution. Imagine, if you will, that people like, say, Banshee because they genuinely prefer it to Rhythmbox – not because they’re secret dark agents of teh Micro$haft trying to “spread Mono”.

Step 3: Understand governance

One of the biggest mistakes made by the “anti-Mono” team is the belief that abuse on forums, blogs, mailing lists and newsgroups is how change happens. I hate to break it to you, guys, but it’s not. Every distribution of Linux is put together by an individual or team, and every distribution has specific processes in place which determine what constitutes a package in the repository, a default package, and so on. Some distributions are dictatorships, some distributions are direct democracies, some are lead by layers of bureaucracy. If you want to fight against something, you need to do it within the system. And some systems make it easier than others to fight.

Here are a couple of examples, to get you going: In Debian, the final decision to include a package in the archive or not is made by the ftpmaster member who audits the package. This audit is re-done every time the package changes the binary .deb files it produces (but not for every upload), and that overall control of what is in the archive remains with them. The decision is made on a simple basis – does the license of this software permit its inclusion and distribution in Debian, under the terms of the Debian Free Software Guidelines. The decision over which packages to depend (or not) in a given metapackage is at the complete sole discretion of that package’s maintainer – so for the GNOME metapackages, that’s the GNOME team. And the decision over which packages to include in the default install image are made by the installer team, heavily influenced by (but not necessarily exactly the same as) the prior decisions of the GNOME team. Packages are solely owned by their maintainers, remember that – meaning the only way to remove Mono (or to reclassify it as non-free or whatever is today’s favourite attack) without cooperation of the package maintainer is… well, there’s a way to do it, but it’s a nuclear option. A Debian Developer (and only a DD, as per the Debian constitution) can call for a General Resolution. It’s detailed in this page right here. But in essence any vote to remove Mono is a vote of no confidence in the abilities of the (thorough and hard-working) ftpmaster team – and a vote that developers should no longer consider their packages to be their own property. Good luck passing any such resolution, especially without mass resignation from the Project. There’s the Debian route. First, contribute enough to be advocated as a Debian Developer, then become one, then file and win a GR to remove Mono. Good luck with that.

Next is Ubuntu. And here, you have an equally tough fight, but for different reasons. Ubuntu has a similar role to ftpmaster, called an Archive Admin – but by and large, Ubuntu trusts decisions made by ftpmaster in Debian. As a result, arguments beyond mere licensing are delegated upwards to a committee type organization called the Technical Board. The TB is the highest law in the land – it’s made up from Canonical employees (including Shuttleworth) and community members – and according to the paperwork, the only extra power Shuttleworth has here is the casting vote in a tie-breaker situation. The TB meets on IRC every couple of weeks or so, and discusses topics raised with them, rendering “final for now” verdicts. The TB have the authority to remove Mono from not only the default install (which would override the Desktop Team’s wishes), but also the entire distribution. However, the TB has already recently reached a near-unanimous verdict that Mono is fine. Sorry, but see step 1 above. If you want to change their minds, then the path is clear – join the TB. They had a nomination period recently (I don’t think any anti-Mono folks signed up), and will be doing so again every now and again. Become a big enough contributor to Ubuntu to make a successful bid to join the Technical Board, and then once on the board, discuss with your peers why you feel Mono should be removed – and win that argument.

Noise on forums is just noise.

Step 4: Understand the relative value of contributions

There are those who have characterised this war as a war between “users” and “developers” – and to an extent that’s true. Everybody is free to make their own decisions regarding their computing experience, and to act upon those decisions. However, the question of who makes that decision affects how far-reaching those decisions are. If a developer makes a decision, that has more wide-reaching results than if a forum poster makes a decision. If a packager decides on something, the effect is wider than if a “mere” user decides something. Those decisions may not be the same as yours (see, again, step 1) but you need to understand that those decisions, those contributions, are far reaching not because of some conspiracy, but because the person doing those things, has been assigned a greater degree of impact by the community at large. If someone is elected to a packager role, then their decisions affect anyone who uses those packages – which may include users, or other packagers, or other developers. If you are not a customer (see step 2) then they will behave however they like, and contribute however they like.

You cannot win a war with a packager with flames. You cannot win a war with a distro team with attacks. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em – and make contributions which outweigh (e.g. render irrelevant) the contributions of those with whom you disagree. Contributions don’t need to just be programming or packaging – many other roles are often overlooked but of vital importance to Free Software’s success, such as artists, translators, documentation writers, and so on. You can contribute in many ways – and whilst your contribution may not directly “hurt” what you don’t like, they can help what you do like – and indirectly win the “battle”.

Step 5: Pick your battles

I have seen it suggested in certain areas that some feel it is their “duty” to try to elicit global change in a single shot – to have their demands met absolutely everywhere at once, and they do so by fighting absolutely everything at once. I’m sorry to tell you this, but the “community” is bigger than you are (and don’t kid yourselves, Mono has a genuine community surrounding it). If you want to elicit change, then focus your efforts. Pick some specific way to contribute which will help your point of view, and only move on when that specific fight is won. Don’t want to see Banshee as a default music player app? Then focus on that – and do so in a positive way. In this case, that means things such as contributing to competing apps like Exaile or Rhythmbox such that they are definitely better and nobody wants Banshee to be the default.

Step 6: Lead by example, not by shouting

If you really, fundamentally feel that your needs are not met by contributing positively, or trying to elicit change via the right governance channels, then  do better. That’s all there is to it. The folks behind, say, Linux Mint felt that their needs were not met (and could not be met for one reason or another) by “real” Ubuntu, so they lead by example and made their own distro. If you really feel your needs are not being met, then you can do the same. Make other apps better, or if push comes to shove, make your own distro. It’s really not hard!

In fact, to illustrate the point, I made one myself. It’s called “Chicken Little Remix” (absolutely not Ubuntu Chicken Little Remix as that would mean worrying about trademark policies), and you can download it from The Pirate Bay in i386 and amd64 formats. As a first cut, it’s simply a Jaunty Alternate ISO with all Mono-related stuff cut away – and it took me an hour to do. Imagine what the combined energies of the entire anti-Mono community could produce, with a little direction. CLR is my attempt to provide some direction – I’m happy to provide advice on how to modify packages and customize the Alternate ISO (something I have experience doing) as long as the name remains in place, but perhaps it could even be treated as a way for people who are “only” users to learn how to become “contributors” too, and make their voices in the greater community louder. Make the distro you wish those idiots in the Technical Board and Desktop Team were producing, and show them how it’s done. Set up a project on Launchpad, a website, make some art, tinker on packages, and make CLR 9.10 the most awesome distribution ever – without need for any of that messy Mono nonsense. The first cut took one person one hour – how much time does that give for the next release? Fill it with Gnote and Solang and AWN and $DEITY knows what else, and demonstrate through tangible contribution how unnecessary Mono really is.

Because when all’s said and done, simply shouting that the sky is falling won’t get you anywhere.

Mio is a heterozygous beige chinchilla, about eleven months old. I have two other chinchillas – her sister Mayu, and mother Miku. Mayu’s a real people pleaser, and always excited by things – which is why I’ve got her more sedate sister out, who is a little easier to work with in front of a camera – since she spends less time running around the place. If you’ve never had chinchillas, then they’re long-lived (15 years), incredibly fluffy (fluffier than any other competitor to the fluffiness throne) rodents. The fur is so dense they can’t get wet, so they take sand baths inst…

…..

Mio, what’re you doing with my computer?

Living with Michael Jackson? I… look, listen you ball of fluff, when I said “non controversial”, I meant it. That means absolutely nothing that could offend people. That’s the interview that killed Jackson’s career. Are you trying to get me into trouble? Can you not hear me? Got something in your ear?

Sigh.

RIGHT. Where was I? Sand baths, right. The sand is extremely fine, and helps them keep their fur clean. Oh, and Mio has a curly piggy tail, rather than the straight tail chinchillas usually have. They are terrible for being fussy eaters, so it’s important not to give them anything that encourages selective feeding – meaning hay for wearing their teeth, and pellets for th… hang on a second.

Wasn’t that interview on ITV?

Doesn’t ITV’s web streaming service only work with Silve…

…

………………..

………..

Mio, you’re in SO much trouble right now. No raisin for you, you bloody rodent

Firstly, Ubuntu’s feature freeze is at the end of August – giving about 6 weeks for Banshee to gain “default” status before that train leaves the station and Rhythmbox sticks around for another cycle. And there are real-world issues that NEED to be resolved within those six weeks for it to happen. This isn’t conjecture, it’s the result of chats with the Desktop team – I think we both still agree on the points we agreed on in Barcelona, and that means picking the “right” player, regardless of what it is, when the time comes to choose.

1. Release schedule. Karmic won’t ship with a beta (1.5.x) Banshee release, and it certainly won’t ship with 1.4.3 – so the Desktop team require assurances that 1.6.0 be released before FinalFreeze (end of October) in order to make the switch NOW in preparation. This is entirely upstream’s lookout, so on this point, the ball’s in their court entirely – I’m not trying to apply pressure, I’m simply stating the state of play as-is.
2. Documentation. Banshee needs offline (GNOME Help System or similar) documentation, which Rhythmbox already has. Right now, all it has is a link to the (dead) Banshee wiki. I understand Canonical folks were looking at this – if you want to help with this one, try talking to jcastro on GIMPnet #banshee.
3. Music Store. I agreed with Seb at UDS that we should include support for a music store (Rhythmbox supports two), and picked Magnatune at random as it happens to work for me in Rhythmbox. This was likely a mistake – Magnatune have no coherent or usable API, and it makes it VERY hard to turn their store into a useful integrated feature. However, there is the beginning of some work on this – if you want to help add a music store to Banshee, then either speak to Max Battcher to cooperate on Magnatune support, or look into making a Jamendo/other-store plugin (should be much easier to support as Jamendo have a real API) based on Gabriel Burt’s Amazon branch. Support for Amazon itself should sadly be considered dead in the water, due to an abusive change from Amazon to prevent Free Software integration.
4. Accessibility. This is an important topic for Ubuntu to be accessible to everyone. Banshee makes use of five custom-made widgets, which all require support for Atk, the Gtk+ accessibility toolkit. However, there are sadly a number of nasty bugs in Atk# which have thrown a spanner in the works, and by the sound of it those bugs cannot be fixed any time soon (as they break the Atk# API). You should try speaking to the Gtk# maintainer Mike Kestner if you want to help at the back-end, or hacker extraordinaire Gabriel Burt for tips on where to help at the Banshee end. The specific bugs for the a11y issues are BNC476836 and BGO533030. It should be considered reasonable (even if it makes packagers like me cry) for Banshee to bundle a private copy of Atk# from SVN, rather than using the current stable release – F-Spot does this already for GIO#

There are also some specific issues which you can help with – at the very least by testing existing patches – which may not be blockers, but are functional regressions versus Rhythmbox.

1. Gapless playback. This is being spearheaded by Christopher James Halse Rogers, our fearless GNOME-Do packager in Ubuntu/Debian. This is being handled in upstream bug BGO440952 – why not lend a hand? Sadly, Rhythmbox’s support for gapless cannot be recycled, as Rhythmbox uses its own custom gapless engine (rather than using GStreamer’s built-in support). RAOF’s patch is ALMOST there, but still goes to hell in a couple of circumstances (or did last I tested it), so why not try it out?
2. Folder watching. Currently, Banshee isn’t aware when you add/remove tracks to/from the folder which you told it your music is in, requiring a library rescan. There’s an open bug on this one too, at BGO385965, primarily being worked on by Christian Martellini (with help from others like Gabriel). Why not try it out, or lend a hand?

More generally, there’s a page on the Ubuntu Wiki listing other odds and sods, which you can use as a point of reference. So. Want to help make Banshee awesome enough to greet newcomers to Ubuntu? Take a look at the list above, and pick something which you feel you can contribute towards. Want to keep Rhythmbox in charge? Take a peek at their wiki. In either case, let’s make sure Ubuntu remains awesome for new and existing users alike! All you need is a little C# knowledge to work on patching, or know how to use “patch” and “make” to test things – you can even use Boo, a Python-like scripting language, to do stuff if you like. Oh, and a few suggestions for airy fairy pie-in-the-sky changes to be made to Mono on Ubuntu as a whole, to make the whole thing much nicer for the distro folks looking to deal with bugs. Support ARM in mono-debugger! Support retracing (apport-style) in mono-debugger! Support mdb files in pkg-create-dbgsym! I’m sure there are plenty more things that could help here – try asking in #ubuntu-devel on Freenode for suggestions of how you could help the folks there, or #mono on GIMPnet for how to help the folks there.

If Banshee doesn’t make the cut this cycle, I have no doubt that it’ll be ready for another punt next time around – and that whomever ends up attending the next UDS can make the case that it’s a great idea to move, given how many issues and bugs were resolved and how it’s grown far more awesome in a short space of time – and, at the same time, fending off stiff competition from post-GSoC Rhythmbox. Remember, kids, competition drives innovation!