Ubuntu Software Store: What it does, and how you can help

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Greg Grossmeier wrote on 28/08/09 14:56:
>...
> Just double checking that I understand this part correctly: we're
> going to have a line in every single software package description in
> all of the Ubuntu repositories that says "Price: Free"?
> 
> EDIT: Just confirmed this with mpt on #ubuntu-devel and he pointed me
> to this bug: https://launchpad.net/bugs/419295 (thanks, mpt)
> 
> From a librarian's point of view (you've solicited our help, and I
> have the degree) that seems like an awful waste of space for something
> that will only being "Price: !Free" 0.001% of the time.

How do you know that? In the iPhone App Store, for example, 77 % of the
applications have a non-zero price.

>                                                    Be explicit when 
> needed, don't clutter the user's view with information that
> practically never changes. I would suggest _only_ showing Price
> information when there _is_ a price.

As I explained in the bug report, that "would cause a Simon-says
problem, where the way to verify that something was free would be to
check that there was no 'Price:' row anywhere on the page."

> My point:
> 
> Explicitly saying "Free" to counteract the fact that it is called a 
> "Store" seems like a lot of work to fix a problem that is avoidable by 
> calling it something other than a Store.
>...

I would have specified that that line should be there regardless of what
the program was called.

Cheers
- --
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkqc32MACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecoBdQCdFVxObXGJBR05IqDbd/zlcaMS
2AIAoMrX2VjOubYxf2d+wfMMrt6sHwmP
=NWyZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----