Draft Product Description for Fedora Workstation

[Mateusz Marzantowicz]

On 03.11.2013 19:40, drago01 wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Mateusz Marzantowicz
> <mmarzantowicz at osdf.com.pl> wrote:
>> On 03.11.2013 19:15, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Reindl Harald wrote:if success is
>>>
>>>
>>>      * to have no centralized updates
>>>      * have most applicatons and tools never updated at all
>>>      * have the weakest security model even compared to Windows these days
>>>      * have a standards violating OS
>>>      * have a unstable OS
>>>
>>>     and all above points are taken from Apple workstations surrounding me
>>>     then indeed i prefer to keep that unsuccesfull
>>>
>>>
>>> You assume that sandboxed apps means we get all the negatives and none
>>> of the benefits.  That is unwarranted.  We can adopt the good parts and
>>> improve upon it based on the lessons learned from adoption of app stores
>>> across multiple operating systems and mobile devices that serve a much
>>> broader audience.  We should be willing to let competent contributors
>>> who are interested in doing that try it and provide useful feedback when
>>> necessary instead of dismissing it on bad assumptions as a knee jerk
>>> reaction on our experiences with proprietary software or bad conduct of
>>> particular companies.
>>>
>>> For a server oriented user those sandboxed apps might not be relevant
>>> and they might be contend to get their apps from the distribution but
>>> sandboxes apps are a fine tradeoff for others who prefer to be not
>>> locked in to a narrow channel for all their needs.
>>>
>>> Lets not pretend that commercial sucess doesn't matter as well. Fedora
>>> might be free for you but it is certainly not free for say Red Hat and
>>> their continued participation is dependent on Fedora being more
>>> successful as well.  I for one, consider this a good thing.
>>>
>>
>> Just one question: what exact problem are trying to resolve sandboxed
>> applications?
> 
> Have a way for thrid parties to distribute applications which does not
> have to be tied to a specific version
> of fedora and "just works" while at the same time (as the app must not
> be from fedora) have some level of
> sandboxing to prevent it from doing what is not supposed to do. [1]
> 
> It also makes it easier for user to install applications without
> having to affect other users.
> 
> 1: http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2013/02/01/developer-hackfest-status/
> 

Do I understand correctly that first problem could be solved by
stabilizing APIs used in various Linux projects? Because developers
don't want stabilizationt they invent workarounds like sandboxes?
Wouldn't it be easier to have stable API for some period of time?

There are some large Opens Source projects that don't change everything
in API with each new release. Maybe Fedora/GNOME could do the same?

I don't see how maintaining local instance of each application is going
to make things easier. It was done this way in MS DOS.


Mateusz Marzantowicz