No more updates for Freecode [LWN.net]

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 28, 2014 9:55 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: No more updates for Freecode by khim
Parent article: No more updates for Freecode

> Sure. But they also act as roadblock on the road between application developer and user which is very hard to pass. Developers lose the ability to push updates to the user and users could not to pick an applications (and versions of the applications) s/he likes, too.

You talk about a roadblock but it's more like a mental barrier. There is nothing in a distribution that prevent people installing software from elsewhere. The Atlassian suite is an example, but there are many many programs for Linux which you can download and will run on any distribution, some you pay for, some you don't.

The problem is that, when downloading such an application, I know *beforehand* that I'm going to spend more time maintaining that single application that for every other application on my system put together. So this application better be the bees knees or it's just not worth it. I have *never* come across a single third party application that was anywhere near as simple to manage as a packaged one. Ubuntu PPAs actually get pretty close, but that's because they're package, albeit by a private person.

So there's no roadblock, instead distributions have made the job of managing applications so easy, that people stay away from applications that are not packaged. Conversely, if you want to distribute your application directly, it had better be awesome or don't bother.

> This, in turn, makes sites like FreshMeat/Freecode mostly pointless: would you spend to much time investigating weather on Mars? Or even somewhere in Antarctica?

This is indeed the reason I never really looked at FreshMeat, even 10 years ago. Why put myself through the pain on maintaining an application that did something that wasn't that important to me anyway? I have better things to do with my time. The fact that the developer has to put more effort in is no problem, because we're optimising for global happiness: the developer is a little less happy, but thousands of users are far more happy.

to post comments

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 28, 2014 12:33 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (9 responses)

There is nothing in a distribution that prevent people installing software from elsewhere.

There is. The lack of stable ABI turn the whole thing into excercise in frustration. I've already showed an example: try to install TeamViewer's .deb on recent version of Ubuntu. It just does not work. And it's not upstream's fault: all the pre-requisites are there yet you could not do that because distrubtion creators broke the only ABI they actually control.

I know *beforehand* that I'm going to spend more time maintaining that single application that for every other application on my system put together.

Of course. But that's because distribution makes make absolutely sure it's not possible to do right. I download small pices of software for Windows, MacOS and Android all the time. Very rarely I have trouble. But with Linux—it's constant strugle. Because Linux made it really hard to create cross-distribution cross-version packages. Great achievement. Not.

So there's no roadblock, instead distributions have made the job of managing applications so easy, that people stay away from applications that are not packaged.

Nope. They made installation of third-party application so hard as to make that impractical. Yes, when you compare installation of applications from source and installation of applications from distro repository then distro version works much better, but it works the same way (easy and seamless) if we are talking about additional vendor-supplied components on other OSes (Windows with it's optional components, Android with GApps, etc) then it's equally seamless. But if you compare installation of third-party apps then it's heaven and earth: on Windows, MacOS, Android one can go and install any random package easily. Granted in some [rare] cases these packages don't work (usually because they use system internals which they were not supposed to use in the first place) but 9 times out of 10 it's easier than installation of source packages by far. When you try to deal with distributions, on the other hand, you can only get similar experience when someone actively tries to keep binaries up to date when distributions change the ABI under them. And most developers don't plan to do that.

Conversely, if you want to distribute your application directly, it had better be awesome or don't bother

… with Linux support. Yes, true. Actually even if you are awesome then it's better not bot to bother. Even applications which were born on Linux (e.g. GIMP) stopped doing that. If you are MacOS or Windows user then you can go, grab then latest and greatest binary and use it. Easy-peasy. If you are Linux user then you SOL.

The fact that the developer has to put more effort in is no problem, because we're optimising for global happiness: the developer is a little less happy, but thousands of users are far more happy.

Except when developers become unhappy then eventually users become unhappy, too. For many of then Linux support is an afterthought and Linux users get the short end of the stick time and again. Eventually they switch to Windows and/or MacOS and became happy. If that is what distribution creators wanted to achieve then I have no complaints, but was under impression that they initially had some other goals.

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 28, 2014 23:45 UTC (Sat) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link] (3 responses)

We had LSB and almost NOONE cared, and I can't remember an LSB application. ABI's for purveyors of binary blobs, just aren't popular, distro's tend to support FOSS not closed s/w.

It has to be possible for 3rd party to do binary right though given sufficient motivation, direct Firefox downloads worked well for me even if it's fatter than a well packaged native version would be.

The commercial software mindset though, tends to target a particular system like RHEL/SLES and certify a version. Schemes to do an install time configure, via scripts & a dynamic module scheme must be technically possible, I haven't heard of one in operation.

It's just always cheaper support wise to mandate the environment and companies who want commercial package X will accept having to get machine Y and OS Z to host it.

If FSF had been as inflexible about where their source built and ran, then Autotools would likely be insisting on SunOS4 or BSDi under some virtual Wine like emulation layer.

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 1:01 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

We had LSB and almost NOONE cared, and I can't remember an LSB application.

Why would anyone care about that POS? LSB was never an answer, it was obvious years ago.

ABI's for purveyors of binary blobs, just aren't popular, distro's tend to support FOSS not closed s/w.

Yet even for FOSS it does not work. I could not run GIMP 2.8 in two years old Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) yet I could on decade old Windows XP. That's just pathetic.

It has to be possible for 3rd party to do binary right though given sufficient motivation, direct Firefox downloads worked well for me even if it's fatter than a well packaged native version would be.

Sure, but this is an attept to put shoe on the wrong foot. If OS maker wants to have a plethora on applications to choose from then it must make it easy to deliver them. Why would anyone try to target desktop Linux with it's insane fragmentation and minuscule market share if they could target Windows, MacOS, iOS or Android instead?

For a time the void was filled by people who grew up with large UNIX boxes. Linux was treated as "mini UNIX" and all was well. But over time people cared about it less and less and today it's suddenly finds itself with acute shortage of developers.

The commercial software mindset though, tends to target a particular system like RHEL/SLES and certify a version.

IOW: they are doing what they do with all other OSes. When program is sold it's sold for a specific version of Windows (or couple of them) and specific version of MacOS (sometimes few of them are listed). After that—it's responsibility of an OS maker to support compatibility. When new version of OS is released and new version of program is released thay may test with a few different versions of OS (today usually Windows Vista to Windows 8.1 is tested) but they still supply users with one set of binaries. It's only natural because it simplifies support. Why do you think they will attempt to do something else? But Linux distributions start foaming at their mouth when presented with such a approach.

Schemes to do an install time configure, via scripts & a dynamic module scheme must be technically possible, I haven't heard of one in operation.

You've not used nVidia hardware, then.

If FSF had been as inflexible about where their source built and ran, then Autotools would likely be insisting on SunOS4 or BSDi under some virtual Wine like emulation layer.

Right. But it's not an excuse to request such support from all other developers. FSF wanted to spread it's creatings as wide as possible. That was wize choice, sure. It means that these things are used everywhere and by everyone (after GPLv3 fiasco they are slowly replaced with BSD-based offerings, but scheme worked well before that). But if your OS only supports such packages and nothing else then it's DOA on a desktop. That's because desktop users actually want to use “latest and greatest” software when they hear about it—and not only superportable software like Autotools-supported GNU software.

Well, not all desktop users want to use “latest and greatest” software, some are happy with the destribution's offers. But when only these are left and everyone else switched to Windows and/or MacOS then FreshMeat/FreeCode becomes entirely pointless—that's where we've started the discussion, remember?

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 15:11 UTC (Sun) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link] (1 responses)

Philosophically, I think Linux desktop gets further marginalised (compared to turn of century) because many of the more pragmatic types, have been seduced to vendor controlled systems like OS X. Windows got it's act together on reliability over years, Win 7 is pretty solid, unlike NT4/2000/XP before Vista's WHQL driver model. So I think I agree with your last point, though right now I do indeed struggle to remember where this started :)

Frankly I'm having trouble understanding your argument, where you're going. It seems to be inconsistent and making some statements refutable by solid evidence, but perhaps it's an entertaining thinking out loud style discussion. So I'll try and be clear ...

Firstly you complained about distros and a lack of an ABI, so I mentioned the LSB.

Secondly, I left Nvidia out of it, as they use a kernel module shim for a driver for their hardware, rather than being application ISV. I have actually used Nvidia a long time ago and have avoided their GPU since, due to their refusal to document & support FOSS developers with information, so you're basically right about not using their GPU (though the old box I'm writing this on has an Nforce chipset).

LSB IS an ABI. ABI's are about boring stability and unchanging API's in sytem library, most change being bug fixes with occasional careful introduction of new compatible features aka Linux kernel. Some distro's supported it well and I've used the hooks provided to increase generality of my scripts.

But for a lot of Linux people "ABI considered harmful!", they want to develop and not have discipline of maintaining compatability, through carefully thought out and planned longterm change.

For example in yr 2000 with LSB, a week or so before LSB 1 was announced, RH 7 came out with an experimental gcc, which made C++ programs incompatible with both gcc-2 & the next release gcc-3. Market leader, basically desiring fragmentatory innovation over binary compatability, and FOSS was unaffected as C++ packages just needed an RPM rebuild. The 2nd-5th tier distro's had more interest in success of standardisation, but as the bubble burst pressure on balance sheets overcame their big market opportunity chasing optimism.

Now your beefs with LSB in previous thread about icons and stuff, I think you expected too much. Stuff like that gets handled by simple scripts. Those can be developed as FOSS with community support. Also in past, I have run very old binaries and they HAVE worked. But I wouldn't expect something like the GIMP to work, with the changing desktop environments and toolkits; unless your old GIMP had been built against bundled toolkit libraries. People just don't do that, when a distro is built, they want a lean mean package optimised and targetting their current release.

Having been in position of doing ports, build and distribution for an ISV, I certainly DID not need 100% compatability. When you have high value software, for decent money, then you can invest in glue at install time.

What you CANNOT do, is cope with churn and support difficulties, caused by all those little tinkering "improvements". Just look how difficult it is for MS to move userbase forward from XP with Win8, despite being in a position to dictate to OEMs and end users.

Desktop fragmenation is an issue for mass market S/W. From example of Apple and Google Android, that now it is about platforms, distro's are niche, hence Google Chromebooks, FireFoxOS, Steam etc. Hence punts like Unity which hope to break into new markets during a disruptive phase and stop Canonical losing money.

Right now, the Linux desktop is a play ground.. it's for developers, enthusiasts and those with deep pockets to speculate with, on the next latest & greatest "Big Thing".

Also, even if a distro goes out of it's way to support alien software, the OS/2 story tells us where that leads, ISVs not targetting native.

Distro's also with optional repo's and suppport for rolling release, I just feel you're perhaps ignoring efforts some make, based on perhaps a small sample size?

The real thing is, that lack of market means, there's no motivation to do what Firefox does and have knowledgeable ppl package for you. For FOSS authors, distro package maintainers take care of release details. So the curse of the "unusual" applies, more and more opinion is stated as fact and a technical solution is not adequate because it won't be accepted.

In the end, it doesn't matter if something is true or not, whether it's contra-factual, because many unequestioning people believe it, it becomes de-fact as real a block, as if it were true.

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 17:50 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

So I think I agree with your last point, though right now I do indeed struggle to remember where this started :)

We started with the assertion that in a world of Linux distributions sites like ~~FreshMeat~~FreeCode are useless because distribution makers erected roadblocks between developers and users.

Everything after that were justifications for these roadblocks and attempts to explain how they are not a problem and how developers and users and stupid to not “see the light”.

Firstly you complained about distros and a lack of an ABI, so I mentioned the LSB.

Indeed, the biggest problems with the Linux distributions is the simple fact that they offer no ABI and no usable SDK to an application developers. LSB is just a fig leaf which is useless and pointless attempt to hide that fact as I explained may years ago.

But for a lot of Linux people "ABI considered harmful!", they want to develop and not have discipline of maintaining compatability, through carefully thought out and planned longterm change.

Indeed. Sometimes it looks like both third-party developers and actual users are some kind of obstacle on the road to nirvana.

For example in yr 2000 with LSB, a week or so before LSB 1 was announced, RH 7 came out with an experimental gcc, which made C++ programs incompatible with both gcc-2 & the next release gcc-3.

Actually this is what I consider proper and correct way of handling things. They needed a compiler with decent C++ support. Said compiler was not available back then (RedHat 7 was released September 25 2000, GCC 3.0 was released June 18, 2001, that's year and half after release of RedHat 7.0). Sadly they have not pursued the needs of desktop users with such a rigor.

The 2nd-5th tier distro's had more interest in success of standardisation, but as the bubble burst pressure on balance sheets overcame their big market opportunity chasing optimism.

Instead of offering usable, comprehensive set of ABIs to give to application developers they tried to pick bits and pieces which were already stable and use that as basis. It'll never work: something will always be in flux. In that case someone must decide that “we are supporting X using Y and W using Z and are ready to support these packages for the next KK years even if original developers will abandon them”. Ubuntu does it right in today's world, but, sadly, it does not look like they have enough manpower to create a coherent result.

Now your beefs with LSB in previous thread about icons and stuff, I think you expected too much.

Why? I don't ask for a “Visual IDE” or any wizards. I'm asking for the bare necessities: an SDK which makes it possible to create a package which I could give to my users. Nothing more, nothing less. Why else will anyone want to read my announcements (on ~~FreshMeat~~FreeCode or any other site) if they have no way to actully try my stuff?

Also in past, I have run very old binaries and they HAVE worked.

Indeed. The foundation (Linux kernel, GlibC, libstdc++, Xlib) is rock-solid. But everything on top is unusable mess.

People just don't do that, when a distro is built, they want a lean mean package optimised and targetting their current release.

Right. And they don't think about the needs of developers and as a result it's hard to develop anything usable for Linux if your program needs anything except the bare necessities (basically if you need to use GUI in any shape or form you are SOL).

Having been in position of doing ports, build and distribution for an ISV, I certainly DID not need 100% compatability. When you have high value software, for decent money, then you can invest in glue at install time.

Of course. But wast majority of the software is not high value software which you develop for decent money but more like “two guys in garage who have saved enough to dedicate half-year of their life to some problem”. They don't have the luxury to chase differences in the distributions and when their savings run over they release their software and switch to something else. They don't ever touch it again. Well, may be they will do a bugfix if it's broken by a new Windows (Android, MacOS, Linux) version, but then again, may be not.

Just look how difficult it is for MS to move userbase forward from XP with Win8, despite being in a position to dictate to OEMs and end users.

Sure. But that happens because they actually care about users. When users refuse to budge they try to convince them, try to offer some incentives, try to do some redesign, etc. Only when they are sure that only tiny percentage of users are unsatisfied (mostly non-payong ones in China) they abandon the old version. Compare with “if you don't want to play by our rules and upgrade two times per year the you could go away” approach of many distributions. Sure, people do go away… to MacOS or Windows. These OSes may be awful “vendor-controlled” ones, but their creators actually hear user's complains—which is not something you could say about Linux distributions.

Also, even if a distro goes out of it's way to support alien software, the OS/2 story tells us where that leads, ISVs not targetting native.

Sure. But eventually this becomes your only option till you die off comepletely. I applaud optimists like rqosa who believes that when you are thrown under the bus you could survive by using thick enough suit, but I somehow don't see such feature.

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 15:02 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (4 responses)

> There is. The lack of stable ABI turn the whole thing into excercise in frustration. I've already showed an example: try to install TeamViewer's .deb on recent version of Ubuntu. It just does not work. And it's not upstream's fault: all the pre-requisites are there yet you could not do that because distrubtion creators broke the only ABI they actually control.

You're going to need a better example. I downloaded the first deb on that page and it worked fine. It required a whole bunch of packages which I installed, but it turns out it doesn't actually need them because it's a static binary.

Now, the second non-multiarch version is indeed broken. Multiarch has been standard for years now, so backward compatibility has indeed been removed. But given the first package works everywhere they should just delete the second one.

But really, I don't see it as a distribution's responsibility to deal with the fact that many libraries don't provide binary backward compatibility. You seem to consider it a distribution's job to make it easy for users to install third party software. As long as the *users* of the distribution don't care, neither will they. And I at least don't care.

> Even applications which were born on Linux (e.g. GIMP) stopped doing that. [distributing directly]

Right, because no-one was interested anyway. Why would I want to download from the GIMP site when I can just use the GIMP PPA[1] and apt-get install?

[1] https://launchpad.net/~otto-kesselgulasch/+archive/gimp

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 15:19 UTC (Sun) by roblucid (guest, #48964) [Link]

And unless you're an enthusiast, you don't need to add a repo/PPA, you use the base system version happily. Who cares when you can upgrade OS in 6 months or 1 years time, when it suits you?

I'm sure everyone who has developed for other people, have had experience of finishing a feature, and because of 80-20 rule, found a "so what!" reaction from users who just don't get it at least initially, or less pleasantly if you dare break compatability and they notice the change done to enable future use cases other than theirs.

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 15:41 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

You seem to consider it a distribution's job to make it easy for users to install third party software.

Of course. That's what an OS is supposed to do. The main function of general-purpose OS to provide support for wide variety of programs. There are OSes which do that well (Windows, Android), the ones which do that not so well (MacOS, iOS) and ones which are absolutely awful (classic Linux distributions fall into that category).

And, surprise, surprise, number of users correlate pretty well with willingness to support developers. Think about it.

P.S. On server situation is different. Linux is king there. Not because it's better in support department (it's as awful as on desktop, actually), but because it's cheaper. When you have one sysadmin and hundreds (or thousands) servers price for Windows (or MacOS which is also quite expensive if you'll recall price of hardware) then it makes sense to cope with all that craizness. On desktop it's just not an issue and Linux is non-contender.

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 17:36 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

>> You seem to consider it a distribution's job to make it easy for users to install third party software.

> Of course. That's what an OS is supposed to do. The main function of general-purpose OS to provide support for wide variety of programs.

Yes, and the OS (Linux) does indeed support a wide variety of programs. I think you meant to say "proprietary programs"? We're talking about distributions, and in the Debian Social Contract it says "Our priorities are our users and free software". As long as the users are not clamoring for making it easy for proprietary developers, it's not going to happen. And rightly so. Debian does support a wide variety of free software and that's what the users want.

> There are OSes which do that well (Windows, Android), the ones which do that not so well (MacOS, iOS) and ones which are absolutely awful (classic Linux distributions fall into that category).

As long as each are meeting the needs of their respective users, what is the problem exactly?

No more updates for Freecode

Posted Jun 29, 2014 18:22 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Yes, and the OS (Linux) does indeed support a wide variety of programs.

No, it does not. You may joke about quality of Android applications but it does not change the fact that there are millions of them. And Windows has similar number of application and most likely even more. And that's not counting special-purpose applications developed “in-house” (some estimates say that there are 10 times more of these). Linux has just a tiny fraction of that.

I think you meant to say "proprietary programs"?

I meant to say “programs delivered in usable form”. Since for most users binaries are the only usable form that's what I'm talking about. If application is actually open sourced or not is minor issue here. Even if user actually has the source (as with many “in-house” applications) there may be noone around who could actually modify/fix it.

As long as the users are not clamoring for making it easy for proprietary developers, it's not going to happen.

Users often try to ask about it but when faced with openly hostily reaction just go with MacOS or Windows.

As long as each are meeting the needs of their respective users, what is the problem exactly?

The problem is that the whole thing slowly falls apart. Few years ago people were able to manage the complexity by throwing huge amount of resources on a problem, but now, when number of developers is shrinking (how many active developers GTK+ have now?) and complexity of the task does not Linux desktop becomes more and more broken. And people who are trying to do something about it (e.g. Lennart Poettering) are met with outright hostility.

It really starts to look like the only solution to the whole mess is replacement of GNU/Mess with something based on Android and I, for one, not sure this will be a good thing.