On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 3:05 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> 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(a)redhat.com> 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