[Bug 789596] Re: "Canonical doesn't provide updates" is a scary message, especially for customers

[Sense Hofstede]

I think that a positive formulation of the sentence would be best. It
should name only those who are accountable, not parties that are not. If
Canonical or MOTUs are not involved, don't name them. People might skip
over the little word 'not'.

"Updates for SOFTWARE are provided by VENDOR" does seem the best
solution for third-party apps to me. I would name the vendor explicitly,
so interested managers can check the company's track record without
having to look somewhere else on the overview page.

For the community maintained packages something like "SOFTWARE is made
available in Ubuntu by the community. Updates may or may not be
provided."

The case of PPAs or unknown third-party repositories is a bit difficult,
since you may have overlap with earlier versions in official
repositories and you cannot easily refer to the name of the repository.
However, we can say that Google's official Chrome repository or that of
Dropbox are more thrustworthy than myfunrepo.example.com/ubuntu would
be. It would be good to say "Updates for Google Chrome are (may be?)
provided by Google." That's a reasonable statement. However, for
<myfunrepo.example.com/ubuntu> I'd say something like "SOFTWARE is made
available for Ubuntu by a third-party. Updates may be made available."

Furthermore, Canonical will provide updates for Empathy Internet
Messaging after October 2012, but in a different release of Ubuntu.
Shouldn't that be reflected in the string as well, or would that be too
much information?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/789596

Title:
  "Canonical doesn't provide updates" is a scary message, especially for
  customers

Status in “software-center” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: software-center

  In the overview of software in Software Centre that does not come from
  the officially supported archives, a warning text is shown informing
  the user that this particular piece of software is not supported by
  Canonical, but that updates MAY be delivered by the community/a third-
  party. It is not only shown for software from community-maintained
  archvies or for PPAs, but also for software that is on sale.

  Although this message is factually correct, it is a scary message.
  Users might get the impression that by default no updates should be
  expected, but if you are lucky something might be done. Especially for
  paid applications, this might not be very encouraging towards users.

  I would suggest to change the warning from a negative formulation to a
  positive: updates for this software are provided by X. Not Canonical,
  etc.

  Furthermore, this message is also shown for packages from the
  Canonical Partner archive--which is maintained by Canonical, AFAI. Is
  that desired behaviour?

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: software-center 4.0.2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-9.43-generic 2.6.38.4
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-9-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Sat May 28 18:13:11 2011
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=nl:en_GB:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=nl_NL.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: software-center
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2010-11-13 (195 days ago)

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