> Namely that it would be expensive to open source it with little benefit in return.
I don't think that's the real reason; I think it's that Canonical wants to maintain control. Their dream of being the App Store of linux isn't working out.
> Canonical already spent a large amount of investment opensourcing launchpad
If their development practices make open-source development expensive, that's Canonical's problem, not anyone else's. Nobody else uses Launchpad because Launchpad is not a compelling platform. It's still tied to bazaar, which frankly lost the version-control wars. Treating git as a second-class citizen is not how to engender contributors.
> Snap store specifically from what I gather is a bunch of operational machinery that doesn't make sense without also operating launchpad.
Another example of having to choose: did Canonical engineer themselves into a corner, causing all of Launchpad to become technical debt from under which Snap cannot escape? Or was it a deliberate business decision to try to maintain control of the store? An affirmative conclusion in either case doesn't look good for Snap.
> Namely they want one location to find software, and one location to serve software. If users have to use the command line to add a external repo that has unfetted access, then that defeats any usability gains.
Users pretty clearly do not want this. Many people use Ubuntu expressly because of the PPA system; I'd argue that it directly caused Fedora's COPR system to exist because of the user demand. There's no mandate that PPA installation require command-line configuration; it would be trivial to create a bespoke per-PPA using e.g. Vala. Synaptic already allows configuration of PPAs via GUI. It's total non-issue.
> That and the whole aspects of malware/trust goes out the window.
They're already out the window. Snap packages are not reviewed for content and anyone can just cram software into it from random GitHub repositories. Wouldn't it be nice if it were possible to set up a 'curated' Snap store with strong promises of software quality and review? We can't, because it's apparently too hard to run. Another drag on Snap.
I'll not bother to respond to the whataboutism regarding PPAs. Literally the only difference between "a giant PPA that Canonical hosts" and the Snap store is that anyone can upload to the Snap store.
None of the problems Snap store purports to solve are compelling, so these explanations don't really further the cause.
> Namely that it would be expensive to open source it with little benefit in return.
I don't think that's the real reason; I think it's that Canonical wants to maintain control. Their dream of being the App Store of linux isn't working out.
> Canonical already spent a large amount of investment opensourcing launchpad
If their development practices make open-source development expensive, that's Canonical's problem, not anyone else's. Nobody else uses Launchpad because Launchpad is not a compelling platform. It's still tied to bazaar, which frankly lost the version-control wars. Treating git as a second-class citizen is not how to engender contributors.
> Snap store specifically from what I gather is a bunch of operational machinery that doesn't make sense without also operating launchpad.
Another example of having to choose: did Canonical engineer themselves into a corner, causing all of Launchpad to become technical debt from under which Snap cannot escape? Or was it a deliberate business decision to try to maintain control of the store? An affirmative conclusion in either case doesn't look good for Snap.
> Namely they want one location to find software, and one location to serve software. If users have to use the command line to add a external repo that has unfetted access, then that defeats any usability gains.
Users pretty clearly do not want this. Many people use Ubuntu expressly because of the PPA system; I'd argue that it directly caused Fedora's COPR system to exist because of the user demand. There's no mandate that PPA installation require command-line configuration; it would be trivial to create a bespoke per-PPA using e.g. Vala. Synaptic already allows configuration of PPAs via GUI. It's total non-issue.
> That and the whole aspects of malware/trust goes out the window.
They're already out the window. Snap packages are not reviewed for content and anyone can just cram software into it from random GitHub repositories. Wouldn't it be nice if it were possible to set up a 'curated' Snap store with strong promises of software quality and review? We can't, because it's apparently too hard to run. Another drag on Snap.
I'll not bother to respond to the whataboutism regarding PPAs. Literally the only difference between "a giant PPA that Canonical hosts" and the Snap store is that anyone can upload to the Snap store.
None of the problems Snap store purports to solve are compelling, so these explanations don't really further the cause.