Highlighting the trademark issue ... [LWN.net]

Highlighting the trademark issue ...

Posted Mar 1, 2025 9:48 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
Parent article: Fedora discusses Flatpak priorities

>The reason Bethke requested that the Flatpak either be removed, or that the Fedora Flatpak be clearly identified as a third-party package, is that users were not even aware they were using Fedora's instead of the OBS project's.

Probably too late now the horse has bolted, but this is the relevant text from the article. And this - unfortunately - makes it extremely clear why this is a trademark issue. If users are unaware they are using a 3rd-party, broken, version then we have a problem ...

Cheers,
Wol

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Highlighting the trademark issue ...

Posted Mar 1, 2025 17:34 UTC (Sat) by mcatanzaro (subscriber, #93033) [Link] (1 responses)

Keep in mind that we're talking about Fedora's software center, so the upstream version from Flathub is considered third-party; you do not see it at all unless you click the "Enable third-party software" button (which users are, in fairness, encouraged to click). Only the Fedora Flatpak and Fedora RPM are available by default. (But yes, from upstream's perspective, the official Fedora packages are certainly the third-party ones....)

Highlighting the trademark issue ...

Posted Mar 1, 2025 17:56 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> so the upstream version from Flathub is considered third-party; you do not see it at all unless you click the "Enable third-party software" button

That could easily be seen as even worse ... you don't see the original project flatpack, but because it's a flatpack it doesn't cross your mind it might be that self-contradictory beast - a distro-specific flatpack ...

Cheers,
Wol