If there's one thing you can always count on in the Linux world it's that packaging can be a nightmare. The OBS Studio team are not happy with the Fedora folks due to Flatpak problems and threatened legal action.
Worse than that, the issue the article states isn’t that it’s a flat pack, it’s that fedora is pushing their rebuilt flat pack of obs that’s buggy instead of the official obs one from flat hub that works, and then the obs project is getting bug reports for a third party distribution that’s broken.
Because fedora isn’t just pushing flat packs, they’re pushing made by fedora versions of them instead of the official builds from the maintainers.
If I were the OBS devs, I’d make a clear indication on their website when reporting bugs that the fedora version of OBS is unsupported for, well, the reasons they don’t support it.
It seems way more effective than threatening legal repercussions.
It’s not distro specific. Fedora Flatpaks are just built from Fedora RPMs, but they work on all distros.
If you care about FOSS spirit, security, and a higher packaging standard, then Fedora Flatpaks may be of interest.
If you want a package that just works, then Flathub may be of interest. But those packages may be using EOL runtimes and may include vendored dependencies that have security issues.
And that’s a perfectly fine position to have. I get most of my apps from Flathub.
I also think that Fedora Flatpaks should be allowed to exist. And most of them work without issues. They just don’t get as much testing as Flathub since the user base is smaller.
It doesn’t mean they are pushing flatpaks, but rather for whatever reason they decided to package their own flatpaks.
Flatpak can support different repos, so of course fedora can host its own. The strange bit is why bother repackaging and hosting software that is already packaged by the project itself on flathub?
One argument might me the security risk of poorly packaged flatpaks relying on eol of dependencies. Fedora may feel it is better to have a version that it packages in line with what it packages in its own repos?
I have some sympathy for that position. But it makes sense that it is annoying OBS when it is causing confusion if its a broken or poorly built repackags, and worse it sounds like things got very petty fast. I think OBS’s request that fedora flag this up as being different from the flathub version wasn’t unreasonable - but not sure what went down for it to get to thepoint of threatening legal action under misuse of the branding.
Fedora probably should make it clearer to its users what the Fedora Flatpak repo is for.
lol. so I guess fedora is pushing flatpacks now? I know Ubuntu was pushing snap, so I guess fedora followed suite with a different standard. yay.
thankfully arch isn’t getting into this nonsense
Worse than that, the issue the article states isn’t that it’s a flat pack, it’s that fedora is pushing their rebuilt flat pack of obs that’s buggy instead of the official obs one from flat hub that works, and then the obs project is getting bug reports for a third party distribution that’s broken.
Because fedora isn’t just pushing flat packs, they’re pushing made by fedora versions of them instead of the official builds from the maintainers.
Great explanation.
If I were the OBS devs, I’d make a clear indication on their website when reporting bugs that the fedora version of OBS is unsupported for, well, the reasons they don’t support it.
It seems way more effective than threatening legal repercussions.
Having distro-specific flatpaks really seems to be defeating the whole purpose
It’s not distro specific. Fedora Flatpaks are just built from Fedora RPMs, but they work on all distros.
If you care about FOSS spirit, security, and a higher packaging standard, then Fedora Flatpaks may be of interest.
If you want a package that just works, then Flathub may be of interest. But those packages may be using EOL runtimes and may include vendored dependencies that have security issues.
I prefer flatpaks that work.
And that’s a perfectly fine position to have. I get most of my apps from Flathub.
I also think that Fedora Flatpaks should be allowed to exist. And most of them work without issues. They just don’t get as much testing as Flathub since the user base is smaller.
And that’s a very good answer to a provocative message.
It doesn’t mean they are pushing flatpaks, but rather for whatever reason they decided to package their own flatpaks.
Flatpak can support different repos, so of course fedora can host its own. The strange bit is why bother repackaging and hosting software that is already packaged by the project itself on flathub?
One argument might me the security risk of poorly packaged flatpaks relying on eol of dependencies. Fedora may feel it is better to have a version that it packages in line with what it packages in its own repos?
I have some sympathy for that position. But it makes sense that it is annoying OBS when it is causing confusion if its a broken or poorly built repackags, and worse it sounds like things got very petty fast. I think OBS’s request that fedora flag this up as being different from the flathub version wasn’t unreasonable - but not sure what went down for it to get to thepoint of threatening legal action under misuse of the branding.
Fedora probably should make it clearer to its users what the Fedora Flatpak repo is for.