On 03/07/2014 11:21 AM, Richard Hughes wrote:
On 7 March 2014 14:08, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanz...@gnome.org> wrote:
Microsoft, Apple, and Google set requirements that apps must follow if
they want to appear in the software center in order to ensure a good
user experience.
This is something I absolutely want to do. We already rate the
applications in GNOME 3.12 depending on how many positive attributes
they have (the star ratings) and I think it's fine to set a minimum
standard and slowly raise the bar over time. Showing 500 applications
that hits some absolute minimum level is much better than showing an
additional 500 basically crap applications.
This decision should belong to the user, though. It's one thing to
default to showing only five-star applications (GTK2, icon with
transparency, AppData with translations) while allowing the user to
widen the criteria to show more applications. It is quite another thing
to make an unilateral decision to take out an entire class that fails to
satisfy some arbitrary requirement.
I do realize that the app installer becomes more complex, with the
'number of stars' selector, and having to make up application data that
the app itself failed to provide, but I think cost/benefit justifies
that effort.
I feel old and cranky arguing this point but the app markets for
portable devices are a _counterexample_ to a thesis that pretty metadata
guarantees better application quality. At least on portable devices the
old-line stuff simply does not install so it is irrelevant; on Fedora it
can be installed and would be useful to someone, if only they can
discover its existence when using the pretty, default application
installer. As another data point, I just introduced 'units' to another
person that missed it in spite of being in the business of scientific
data/calculations. Fedora should make it easier, not more difficult, for
people to discover such useful things.
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