Snaps are a default no, obviously. Most of the points by Flatkill still hold true to this day. Apart from that, I have my own set of disagreements which I’ll not be talking about - basically, stuff like reproducibility, storage space, inconsistent permissions, inconvenient configurations, outdated runtime - well, you get the point, so I’ll not be expanding on that.
My primary disillusionment towards Flatpak has to do with how people with shared backgrounds and vested corporate interests have taken over open-source - in this particular case, I am talking about Big Tech. It’s almost as if the space for a community-developed organization is hijacked by them - by them occupying core positions of the organization.
These organizations do not follow a horizontal approach to decision-making, they often come up with decisions without consulting folks that aren’t within their direct circle, and worst, when they’re held in a tight-spot, they can evade any criticism by appealing to authority - that they’re the maintainers/contributors, and they know what’s best for the project’s future.
The same is true about funding - it is always through members of the company that they’re indirectly funding these projects, that I can’t help but feel that the “community”, aka the outsiders never had the chance to be a part of the decision-making.
Flatpak may have it’s share of poor features that can be fixed - sand-boxing can be improved by using permissive containers that allow particular shell variables, installation will throw dialogue, informing the users beforehand about the permissions these apps will need, developers may be forced to use proper run-times, and perhaps, some of the runtime be eliminated to use system dependencies, thereby complying with storage compliance - I don’t know, but it could be fixed. But this invisible, unspoken flaw in the governance? No way.
You’re complaining about corporate fundings. Without them, a lot of open source tech would definitely not be as advanced as it is today. Since everything’s open source, anyone can just fork a project when some “malicious megacorp” “hijacks” the project. Funny how a similar case happened “the good way” recently with Redis/Valkey, but the other way around.
There’s always some doomers only seeing potential bad futures in awesome stuff, huh?
Oh sorry, I should’ve mentioned why I hate RedHat. Well, I used to like it. Like is an understatement, I used to love them. Because I was one of those college grads who wanted to take part in RedHat’s Tev-Aviv program for the open-source AI and software stuff. I was so thankful and enthusiastic about contributing to Linux. And even though I was not selected, I would embrace their products, and related OSS projects - I ditched Ubuntu, and stayed with Fedora for almost four years, before I had a change of heart last September.
I didn’t want to go on a political rant, but here we are. The world ain’t single-dimensional, chief. It is the culmination of every factor that makes me hate Fedora, Flatpak, systemd - am I forgetting something else? I hope not. Not every opposition to corporate support of open-source is some unhinged boomer rant about the good ol’ days of X11 and POSIX-compliant shell - well, I’m a Gen-Z kid, to begin with. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the advancement of open-source, if the cost is supporting another corporation responsible for the Holocaust, Nakba and Apartheid. Those injustices and deaths were avoidable. As someone from a former colony, I can not, and will not tolerate enabler of these atrocities.
Well you do you. I don’t see the point in hating open source software made by them, you’re not paying them unlike with regular products and boycotting them.
Do you maybe mean snap?
Snaps are a default no, obviously. Most of the points by Flatkill still hold true to this day. Apart from that, I have my own set of disagreements which I’ll not be talking about - basically, stuff like reproducibility, storage space, inconsistent permissions, inconvenient configurations, outdated runtime - well, you get the point, so I’ll not be expanding on that.
My primary disillusionment towards Flatpak has to do with how people with shared backgrounds and vested corporate interests have taken over open-source - in this particular case, I am talking about Big Tech. It’s almost as if the space for a community-developed organization is hijacked by them - by them occupying core positions of the organization.
These organizations do not follow a horizontal approach to decision-making, they often come up with decisions without consulting folks that aren’t within their direct circle, and worst, when they’re held in a tight-spot, they can evade any criticism by appealing to authority - that they’re the maintainers/contributors, and they know what’s best for the project’s future.
The same is true about funding - it is always through members of the company that they’re indirectly funding these projects, that I can’t help but feel that the “community”, aka the outsiders never had the chance to be a part of the decision-making.
Flatpak may have it’s share of poor features that can be fixed - sand-boxing can be improved by using permissive containers that allow particular shell variables, installation will throw dialogue, informing the users beforehand about the permissions these apps will need, developers may be forced to use proper run-times, and perhaps, some of the runtime be eliminated to use system dependencies, thereby complying with storage compliance - I don’t know, but it could be fixed. But this invisible, unspoken flaw in the governance? No way.
You’re complaining about corporate fundings. Without them, a lot of open source tech would definitely not be as advanced as it is today. Since everything’s open source, anyone can just fork a project when some “malicious megacorp” “hijacks” the project. Funny how a similar case happened “the good way” recently with Redis/Valkey, but the other way around.
There’s always some doomers only seeing potential bad futures in awesome stuff, huh?
Oh sorry, I should’ve mentioned why I hate RedHat. Well, I used to like it. Like is an understatement, I used to love them. Because I was one of those college grads who wanted to take part in RedHat’s Tev-Aviv program for the open-source AI and software stuff. I was so thankful and enthusiastic about contributing to Linux. And even though I was not selected, I would embrace their products, and related OSS projects - I ditched Ubuntu, and stayed with Fedora for almost four years, before I had a change of heart last September.
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I didn’t want to go on a political rant, but here we are. The world ain’t single-dimensional, chief. It is the culmination of every factor that makes me hate Fedora, Flatpak, systemd - am I forgetting something else? I hope not. Not every opposition to corporate support of open-source is some unhinged boomer rant about the good ol’ days of X11 and POSIX-compliant shell - well, I’m a Gen-Z kid, to begin with. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the advancement of open-source, if the cost is supporting another corporation responsible for the Holocaust, Nakba and Apartheid. Those injustices and deaths were avoidable. As someone from a former colony, I can not, and will not tolerate enabler of these atrocities.
Well you do you. I don’t see the point in hating open source software made by them, you’re not paying them unlike with regular products and boycotting them.