Proposing a New App Developer Upload Process

[Emmet Hikory]

Didier Roche wrote:
> I don't agree it's only for low quality apps. More than once, people
> asked me to package their apps into ubuntu. This is particularly
> annoying when I have no interest at all in the package itself. The
> last case is pyromaths, which turned out to be quite popular in
> schools. It's definitively a quality apps and I kind of regret to
> upload it to ubuntu proper instead of letting them deal with myapps
> for now as I have to admit I won't do a good job tracking them.

    In this case, do you see any reason that the developers of this
package should not be able to be granted PPU access to keep their
software well maintained in the archive now that it has been packaged,
rather than being subjected to arbitrary restrictions on what the
software may be allowed to do?

    If so, what do you think would be required for you to feel
comfortable endorsing such a grant of access?  If not, why should
any Ubuntu Developer refrain from such an endorsement if they
consider the application well-packaged (either as a result of
their collaboration or review of the packaging)?

> The MyApps story is to avoid those 2 pitfalls to occur:
> * having ubuntu developers working on what they want to work on and
> focus their effort on that, following the components they selected
> closely and be able to help them.
> * having application developers being able to have the control where
> they should have: their own applications and decide when they
> update. We can enable them to update as long as they do no harm to
> the platform (like in the file conflict case, and many other use
> cases requiring insulation). The ultimate goal is that all the
> packaging part is helped/assisted to them: it's not because I want
> to upload my application to ubuntu that I have to become a packager
> and know every detail of the debian policy. I just want to deliver
> my application to users.

    While these are both laudable goals, I don't understand why there
needs to be such a firm separation between "packages that are in Ubuntu"
and "packages that upstream authors may update".  While I am in favor
of taking care to insulate our users from potentially malicious packages
in the presence of a completely automated acceptance process, I expect
that the vast majority of software authors would also be perfectly happy
to be able to upload their software directly after receiving some manual
review or assistance from someone knowledgeable about packaging, and I
believe that we both can and should attempt to enable as many as we feel
we can trust to do just this, rather than relegating them to some more
limited packaging area just because we don't want to be personally
responsible for the package.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY