On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 3:05 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, 2014-01-24 at 14:47 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote: >> On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 2:23 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > On Fri, 2014-01-24 at 14:03 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote: >> > >> >> > If we just had a nice Software/Steam-ish platform where you'd know all >> >> > the major third-party stuff was available, with a decent interface and >> >> > screenshots and reviews and all that gumph that's the current vogue, >> >> > it'd be a much nicer experience, even if ultimately what you got was the >> >> > same big static bundle you get from a tarball/dumb package today. >> >> >> >> So if one were to go to all of the infrastructure work and >> >> cross-distro collaboration and get vendor buy-in, would you view that >> >> single "platform" (or AppStore or whatever) as something that a Fedora >> >> software installer could point to and include in searches done in the >> >> software installer? >> > >> > Like I said I don't view the degree of isolation of the platform from >> > the distro as a hugely key issue, and it's something we could figure out >> > later, but I guess my personal answer would probably be 'yes, as long as >> > it was sufficiently clear what was going on'. We already have various >> > mechanisms like this in the distro, so it'd be kind of inconsistent to >> > zap it for this purpose - though I think all the similar mechanisms that >> > are currently allowed (I'm thinking of pip / rubygems / Wordpress plugin >> > store and similar things) are for access to 'repositories' that have >> > similar freedom / patent encumbrance policies to ours, which is kind of >> > a notable difference. >> >> I understand the preference for one nice, consistent location and I >> agree it would be nice. But so as to be clear, the real key >> differences you see here are: >> >> "as long as it was sufficiently clear what was going on" >> >> and >> >> "existing mechanisms have similar policies to Fedora's". >> >> Is that correct? > > No, not entirely, because there's a significant difference in this > approach. You'd install the platform from Fedora's repos - which would > have the implication that we are responsible for the platform working on > Fedora, which seems like a reasonable commitment on our part - and you'd > then install the software from the platform. I see. So you install "AppStore" from some website, and then open that up and it has whatever. OK, that's a bit different than what I thought you were describing. Thanks, that helps me understand where you're coming from better. > When someone runs Steam on Fedora and then installs a game, it's pretty > clear that the game came from Steam, not Fedora. If it doesn't work, > they're probably not going to blame Fedora. If it's a non-free game, > it's fairly clear that doesn't mean Fedora endorses non-free software. They'll likely still blame Fedora for having deficient driver support our media codecs, but sure ;). (Games are a horrible example, but I'm just having fun there not seriously debating.) > Any mechanism which results in the actual software being accessed > through the same interface as Fedora's own packages does not have this > clarity baked in, so it has to communicate it in some other way. Right > now the hoop-jumping you have to go through in order to enable an > external repo or install an external package *also* has the effect of > making this clear - I think that's one reason this debate is so fuzzy: > from one perspective the difficulty sucks, but from another perspective > it's performing a valuable function for us. I don't mind losing the > aspect that sucks, but I don't want to lose the valuable function. OK. josh -- desktop mailing list desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
