This is not a good trend [LWN.net]

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 1, 2025 2:09 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627)
In reply to: This is not a good trend by intelfx
Parent article: Fedora discusses Flatpak priorities

When third-parties release broken versions of your software under your name, and users blame those problems on you, what else can you do other than assert trademark rights? This is exactly the sort of problem trademarks are designed to prevent.

to post comments

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 1, 2025 2:54 UTC (Sat) by bgilbert (subscriber, #4738) [Link] (7 responses)

You can collaborate with them to fix it, understanding that you are a participant in a broader ecosystem you don't have a unilateral right to control.

Historically there's been an understanding that the freedoms of free software must include the freedom to ship broken versions of it. That's necessary in order to also have the freedom to ship improved versions, such as versions with antifeatures removed.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 1, 2025 8:56 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (4 responses)

Licenses that require renaming of the software in the event of shipping modified versions have long been considered free software.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 2, 2025 2:35 UTC (Sun) by bgilbert (subscriber, #4738) [Link] (3 responses)

The FSF indeed says so, but they also have some reservations about degree of burden, as do some of their license analyses and as you have done in the past (in an extreme case, admittedly). Community norms seem relevant here. Firefox/Iceweasel has caused major pain in the past, and that's just one package. If it became common for upstreams to require renaming patched versions, the burden on distros (and indeed on users trying to find distro packages) could be quite substantial.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 2, 2025 12:38 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

> If it became common for upstreams to require renaming patched versions, the burden on distros (and indeed on users trying to find distro packages) could be quite substantial.

And what's wrong with that? If distros insist on playing the middleman then they have to shoulder the support burden.

It's the same story as with with that damn DMA API: either you support something – and then you can impose demands, or you don't support something – and then you don't have any say on how app is supposed to work.

For ages distros were trying to play games where they have been trying to impose their rules on everyone while refusing to do the support work.

Flatpacks and SNAPs gave technical means of solving the issue, but the will to relinquish control is still not there.

Which is sad: the ability to build apps and deliver them to users was so natural, it's, essentially, the basis of a general-purpose OS that it's really hard to even believe that someone may still fight that basic need.

If distros want or need to include some third-party code – that's fine… but there shouldn't be any confusion about who is the support contact… today we have that confusion and it needs to be fixed, one way or another.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 2, 2025 13:05 UTC (Sun) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]

> while refusing to do the support work.

This is abject nonsense, and just shows you haven't the faintest clue about the work distro developers actually do. If you hate Linux distros so much, just switch to Windows - everyone ships their own apps as .exe to download from random websites, I hear it works really great, especially for security

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 2, 2025 13:34 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> while refusing to do the support work.

*ahem*

To quote https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/blob/master/COPYING --

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 1, 2025 19:03 UTC (Sat) by Mook (subscriber, #71173) [Link] (1 responses)

Per the article, they tried to; a bug was filed, and was either ignored or just shut down.

See also specific comment describing their experience: https://gitlab.com/fedora/sigs/flatpak/fedora-flatpaks/-/...

The issue was that Fedora was shipping broken versions, but making the users think they were getting the upstream version (because it's a Flatpak), so upstream was getting all the bug reports. Historically, when distros ship broken versions (e.g. Debian and keepassxc for a while) at least the users can figure out where the issue lied.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 2, 2025 2:54 UTC (Sun) by bgilbert (subscriber, #4738) [Link]

Those problems aren't new to Flatpaks, though. As long as there have been downstreams, users have misunderstood the ecosystem and reported downstream bugs upstream, and downstreams have been uncooperative (sometimes very uncooperative). None of that is good, and it requires finesse, but it doesn't seem like a problem meriting legal threats.