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This is not a good trend

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 2, 2025 12:38 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: This is not a good trend by bgilbert
Parent article: Fedora discusses Flatpak priorities

> 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.


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