Heads up; F22 will require applications to ship appdata to be listed in software center

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

On 01/24/2014 10:39 AM, Richard Hughes wrote:
> On 24 January 2014 10:32, Björn Persson <bjorn at xn--rombobjrn-67a.se> wrote:
>> I'm not familiar with APG but from your description it sounds like a
>> perfect example of stable and reliable software – the best kind there
>> is.
> Right, so it belongs in Fedora; I don't think anyone is arguing
> against that. There is a metric ton of packages that are dead upstream
> with very few (if any users). I feel that a lot of these types of
> package are getting auto-cleansed from the distro when they fail the
> automated rebuilds a few releases in a row, or when the original
> fedora maintainer gets sick of the bug-mails and simply orphans it.
>
> My mail was about crappy GUI applications that users install and then
> the application crashes, they report a bug or feature request, wait,
> and nothing happens as the upstream is long dead and there are going
> to be no more releases. We can include those in the distribution for
> very little "cost", but we shouldn't be advertising them in the
> software center among all the other awesome applications we have.

If there exist and centralized software application center I as an end 
user would just go to my "Gnome Application Center" scroll or search 
through application list, double click or double tap the application 
that I would find interesting and install it which if I understand 
correctly would be installed into application container outline by 
Alexander and Lennart.

If I lack proprietary driver of any kind to run chosen application I 
would think the application center would point that out to me as well 
and where to get that driver if it could not install it for me or be 
told that the application I have chosen would be incompatible with all 
of my device if it did not find it.

So this may come as completely stupid question but what has centralized 
software application center for Gnome have to do with distribution since 
I as an end user would never install application in Gnome in any other 
way then to use "Gnome Application Center" thus I as an application 
developer would never develop my application to be used outside Gnome 
and polices around the application center like Android has [1][2] and 
quite frankly would be glad not having to deal with distribution package 
management systems like...

DPKG
APT - aptitude - dselect - Ubuntu Software Center

RPM Package Manager
YUM - APT-RPM - poldek -  up2date - urpmi - ZYpp

Classic Tar ball
slapt-get - slackpkg - zendo - netpkg - swaret

Bunch of "others"
appbrowser - Conary - Equo - pkgutils - pacman - PETget - PISI - Portage 
- Smart Package Manager - Steam - Tazpkg - Upkg

Which brings up another question if the intent is to aim for "Gnome 
Application Center" dont you need to control and release your own OS on 
a rebase-able release schedule since for example here in Iceland they 
have already replaced pc with tablets in several school so the next 
generation of end users is *used* to get a rebase-able update for their 
device.

We cannot clean up the distribution which I consider the nr.1 priority 
we need to do just so it becomes agile enough for anykind of future 
proposal because the policy and the community will ,seems to be "hey if 
it automated rebuilds we ship it!" ( and this is just one distribution 
policy's then there is Debian,Arch,Suse etc.. )

So I get to the point I'm trying to see and understand what role do 
distribution play in that future for Gnome and why is Gnome contributors 
wasting so much time and energy in distribution politics and 
compatability as opposed to fully commit to the next step of the 
evolution and move beyond distribution in become a distribution of it's own?

JBG

1. http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html
2. http://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html