brainstorming for UDS-N - Application Developers

[Marc Deslauriers]

On Mon, 2010-10-04 at 12:43 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > 
> > In the past four years, not one but two operating systems have each,
> > starting from zero, accumulated more than 20 *times* as many
> > applications as Ubuntu has. What we are doing is not working. It's time
> > to try something else.
> 
> I fundamentally think this is wrong.  As a user I really don't need MORE 
> applications.  I need applications that are better, more stable, faster.  The 
> new use case is rare.  Just going for volume isn't the right answer and the 
> lack of a certain volume isn't indicative of a problem.

+1

There's so much stuff (and crap) in the Android market that I stopped
looking at it long ago.

>                                             Your idea
> > > 
> > > could work if all applications were sandboxed (i.e. Android model) but
> > > not in Ubuntu.
> > 
> > Ubuntu Software Center, for example, has unit tests without being
> > sandboxed.
> 
> So?  Software Center is maintained and developed by trusted developers and so 
> doesn't require sandboxing.  If you want to get beyond the standard 
> distribution model of software deployment, then you are going to need some 
> technical measures to isolate untrusted applications from other applications, 
> user data, and system elements they are not authorized to use.

If we go the route of being able to submit apps easily without becoming
an Ubuntu developer, we would need to start performing extensive
auditing on applications that are submitted, like Apple and Google do.
We would also need to have a way of remotely wiping applications that
contain malware or security issue that are being ignored by the
developer. This may be more work on our part than simply packaging stuff
ourselves.

Marc.