brainstorming for UDS-N - Application Developers

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, October 07, 2010 08:06:42 am Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Scott Kitterman wrote on 07/10/10 03:21:
> > On Wednesday, October 06, 2010 07:23:00 am Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> >...
> >
> >> By spending less time on other people's applications, we could spend
> >> more time testing fixes to Ubuntu core.
> > 
> > What's Ubuntu's core?
> 
> Perhaps there are better definitions, but my current working definition
> is "ubuntu-desktop and everything it Depends: on". (Kubuntu Core would
> be the equivalent with kubuntu-desktop, and so on.)
> 
> This is distinct from "software we ship by default", e.g. things that
> ubuntu-desktop Recommends:.

That's an interesting distinction.  I'm not sure how well it maps to what the 
users experience.  IIRC depends in this case is mostly about that base 
workspace functionality and I think mostly what the user experiences is the 
core applications.  I doubt expending less effort on these would get a lot of 
support.

> >...
> >
> >>>>>> Every general-purpose operating system has gone through a stage
> >>>>>> where the primary publisher of software for it was the OS vendor
> >>>>>> themselves. Every popular general-purpose operating system quickly
> >>>>>> outgrew that stage.
> >
> >...
> >
> > I don't recall having used a general purpose operating system where I
> > viewed the O/S developer as the primary publisher of software for it
> 
> That's because for most of them since the Apple II, that stage ended
> before the OS was released to the public. (The initial iPhone OS was a
> notable exception, where Apple was the primary software publisher for
> almost a year afterwards.)

OK.  That sounds a lot like "With the exception of iOS for it's first year, 
general purpose operating systems have never attempted being the primary 
publisher of applications for it".  I think that reinforces my view that 
experience with such operating systems in not particularly relevant to what a 
Linux distribution does.

Scott K