This is not a good trend [LWN.net]

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 2, 2025 20:30 UTC (Sun) by roc (subscriber, #30627)
In reply to: This is not a good trend by NAR
Parent article: Fedora discusses Flatpak priorities

Yes! Upstream working with downstream distros sounds good on paper until you realize how fragmented the distros are, all with different people, processes and tools. It's untenable.

"Just focus on the important distros" people say, but of course no-one agrees on what are the important ones, and of course every distro that one of your users uses is important to them.

For a lot of apps an upstream-provided Flatpak seems like a pretty good solution. Upstreams like OBS should be able to declare that they don't want distro-packaged distribution. Friendly people should honor the requests of people whose work they're benefiting from, even when they don't legally have to. Therefore distros that don't respect such a request should be shamed and required to do the hard work of ripping out the trademarks.

"Upstreams benefit from downstream packager work too" people say, but it's incredibly asymmetric in general.

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This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 3, 2025 13:35 UTC (Mon) by PastyAndroid (guest, #168019) [Link] (3 responses)

Again, no.

I said that bug reports could be handled by the distribution first, the user knows which distribution they are using and it is their responsibility to report bugs to the correct place.

Distributions could make this clearer before downloading. E.g, something like "Software included in this distribution is packaged and redistributed by distribution X and may be modified, sometimes this may cause unforeseen issues with the software operation as such if you experience issues we recommend reporting it to our bug tracker <link> first or seeking support from our community at <locations>."[1]

Perhaps even a dialog on first boot could do similar. Thus, the developers in most instances will not have to do anything since the user has already been directed.

As for dealing with it themselves, I did say automated. Perhaps requiring a link to the distributions bug report before accepting a report, for example.

Do note, this mostly only applies to developers who are worried about this kind of thing and how their software is used/distributed.

[1] I'm not a writer or people person, I'm a coder. This will have to be re-written entirely, but you get the point. :-P

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 3, 2025 13:45 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Distributions could make this clearer before downloading. E.g, something like "Software included in this distribution is packaged and redistributed by distribution X and may be modified, sometimes this may cause unforeseen issues with the software operation as such if you experience issues we recommend reporting it to our bug tracker <link> first or seeking support from our community at <locations>."[1]

Distributions can (and do!) do this until they are blue in the face, but end-users will routinely ignore any such notificaitons (even if done on *every* program notificaiton) and go straight for the upstream, nearly every single time.

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 3, 2025 14:46 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

This is not how users behave. They see an error message or experience an issue, they search it on Google which will find the original author of the software and not the distribution. Especially if that error message or issue was seen in the Windows or Mac OS versions too. Users don't want to use distributions (or even operating systems for that matter), they want to use a specific set of applications (sometimes with specific versions).

This is not a good trend

Posted Mar 3, 2025 16:23 UTC (Mon) by PastyAndroid (guest, #168019) [Link]

If the issue persists across multiple operating systems and on any configuration, then it is not the fault of the distribution and the distribution should not be held responsible.

The issue we're discussing here is where Fedora compiled the application with different versions of software than the application author did, this caused issues with the software. That is a distribution specific issue and would apply in this case and thus, this belongs as a report for the distribution and not the original authors. Such issues should always be first reported to the distribution, not the authors.

The line can get a little blurry as to who is responsible from a users perspective and so, I suggested reporting all issues to the distribution first as a matter of course, the distribution can help guide the user as to whether it's a distribution specific issue or an upstream issue - perhaps the package maintainer or someone on behalf of the distribution could open the upstream bug report as they are in a much better position to provide the necessary information (think debugging and otherwise).

In any case, authors who do not wish to deal with such potential issues can use flathub or other official distribution methods and avoid their packages being redistributed in a distribution using their trademark rights to refuse it. Thus, any issues are solely on the original authors as they control the whole chain in that case.

Overall the key would be to ensure users are properly guided in how to report their problems, removing any ambiguity or need to question it. The easier you make this for users, the better.

We really do not want to be an 'open community' that sues each other using trademark rights when we are unhappy with something. That doesn't sound very open at all. Instead we should aim to solve the underlying issues as opposed to putting a band-aid on issues or ignoring them.