Proposing a New App Developer Upload Process

[Riku Voipio]

On 5 September 2012 06:39, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> How many
> solitaire games do we need?  I'm not sure, but I'm confident it's fewer than
> one finds in whatever Android Marketplace is called now.

> Historically, Linux distros have included a curated collection, some larger,
> some smaller, of relevant applications, libraries, etc that can be used on the
> base operating system.  That curation process is one of the real strengths of
> Linux distributions and I think "Oh, let's have a bazillion of everything
> because it's there" is the wrong way to go.

That's a bit Stockholm Syndromish - the collection is only curated for
packaging quality, not the quality of the application itself or the
amount of overlapping applications. Observe the  ~20 solitaire game
packages in Ubuntu not to mention the amount of window managers etc.
The "curation process" is not to have less or better apps, it is a
necessity since Debian packaging is complex and any package could ruin
users install (postinst scripts run as root!).

The extras process should not be about "having gazillion apps like
android" but rather "having upstreams upload their apps themself like
they do on android". The key end user story it provides is getting new
versions of applications when the new application is released rather
than when the whole distro is upgraded. Right now, precise users can't
easily install gimp 2.8 or chromium 21. The secondary advantage is
that Ubuntu can concentrate in core distro and leave applications to
3rd parties.

These goals can only be reached if the 3rd party uploaded applications
are insulated so well that the review process can be done mostly
automatically - else the reviewers will continue to be the bottleneck.

Riku