[Bug 630731] Re: Missing filter : free software only

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

If I read it correctly, the branch changes the two filter options to
three: "All software", "Free Software", and "Canonical-Maintained
Software". I see three issues with this.

First, we're in an environment where software developers have muddled
the meaning of "free". USC offers both commercial and non-commercial
software, and "free" is the only reasonable word to use for software
where the price is zero. So in USC, to be as clear as possible, we use
"free" only for zero price, and "open source" for the other meaning. I
can imagine someone wanting to show only zero-price software, and that
is what I assumed your code did -- right up until I got to line 420 of
the diff and saw the 'if self.distro.get_license_text(component) !=
"Open source"'.

The second issue is that however the option was worded, it might imply
that Canonical-Maintained Software is not open source, when almost all
of it is (all except "restricted"). I'm not sure how to fix this, or
whether I'm worrying over nothing. Any ideas?

Third, for any configuration option that exists, some proportion of
people will twiddle it by mistake. Maybe their mouse slips while they're
trying to do something else. Or maybe they try it just to experiment,
and it seems to do nothing, so they don't bother to switch back. Almost
all software available in USC currently is open source, so choosing the
"Open Source" option wouldn't appear to do anything initially, but days
or weeks later people would wonder why (for example) they couldn't see
Beep. That doesn't mean the option shouldn't exist, but it does mean it
should be obvious how to untwiddle it *from* the places where you're
likely to fail because you twiddled it. For example, from search
results. So, this needs a little more design work.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/630731

Title:
  Missing filter : free software only

Status in “software-center” package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: software-center

  In Software center, there is no filter "free software only".

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  Package: software-center 2.1.15
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-19.28-generic 2.6.35.3
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-19-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Sun Sep  5 11:53:30 2010
  EcryptfsInUse: Yes
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Beta amd64 (20100901.1)
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=fr_FR.utf8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: software-center

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