Proposing a New App Developer Upload Process

[Allison Randal]

On 09/05/2012 10:12 AM, David Planella wrote:
> Al 05/09/12 17:49, En/na Allison Randal ha escrit:
>>
>> - Extras is a place to experiment with how the training wheels should
>> work, without disrupting the main archives.
>>
>> - Eventually Extras should go away, once we've extracted the best value
>> from the experiment.
> 
> That said, there is one part where I disagree: in considering Extras (if
> we identify Extras with the App Developer Process) an experiment or
> training ground for Ubuntu platform development, for which we already
> have a process in place.
> 
> I consider the App Developer Process simply a way to enable application
> authors to seamlessly and securely publish their apps. Human review and
> packaging policies have proven to be the main bottlenecks for this
> happening, and these (plus security) are the main points the proposal is
> trying to address.

Oh, yeah, I'm not saying we should chuck out App Developers. What I'm
saying is that if they have unique needs, over the long-term we need to
address those needs as part of the overall Ubuntu Developer strategy,
and not segregated off to the side. Similarly, if it turns out that some
type of lighter PPU rights with required sandboxing are valuable, then
maybe they belong in the wider Ubuntu Developer context too. (Last I
checked, the DMB was considering some kind of PPU without Membership,
which is another sort of lighter rights.)

I wouldn't say we've proven either idea yet. All Extras has really
proven so far is that packaging and reviewing packages is hard work,
even for simple apps. And, we pushed it farther than REVU, because we
did several rapid iterations on interfaces/tooling for manual reviews,
and still found it was way too much work and couldn't scale to handle a
rapid influx. That's a valuable lesson, and worth the experience.

I am really interested in the potential for automated sandboxing, and
right now Extras is the best place to experiment with it. And, if it
works well, then it could very well benefit other parts of Ubuntu, or
Debian, or any Debian-based distro. (I don't imagine the tools will be
general enough to handle other package formats. Not a requirement.)

Allison