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Fedora threatened with legal action from OBS Studio due to their Flatpak packaging
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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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What is the lesson we can learn here as stated by the author of the post?
There is no info why packaging failed. I can't draw any obvious lesson from this post
The lesson is that Fedora Flatpak Repo needs to fuck off. It's an anti-pattern to have an obscure flatpak repo with software that is packaged differently from everything else.
The entire point of flatpaks was to have a universal packaging format that upstream devs could make themselves, and Fedora is completely undermining it.
They work on other distros... if they work at all. If those "strict guidelines" are resulting in flatpaks like OBS and Bottles, which are broken and the devs have tried to get them to stop shipping, then I'll pass on Fedora flatpaks.
I dont criticize Flatpaks for allowing alternative packaging sources. I criticize Fedora for sneakily (whether intentionally sneaky or not) setting their broken flatpak repo as the default, leading to a bunch of confusion by Fedora users that don't know they're actually using different, sometimes broken, packages from everyone else.
The uBlue downstreams of Fedora know this, and they have the decency to present the user with that information upon installation. So thankfully, their users don't end up wasting their time with problems that Fedora introduced.
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I don't disagree with most of that, but none of what you said actually addresses the problem. The problem is that there are functionally two (notable) flatpak repositories, but one of those is going against the will of the upstream software devs and shipping broken software that they have asked them to stop packaging. And Fedora users are getting the broken flathub repository as the default, without really having reason to suspect that their "flathub store" would ever trick them into installing from a different source. The "verified" badge, especially the lack thereof, does not address that.
You can RTFM someone all day, but if you actually want Linux to be adopted by more people, you need to reduce the anti-patterns. Snaps are generally known about because they are infamous for also breaking packages. And they're still major footguns when people are recommending Ubuntu to people that are new to Linux, who are the least likely to know that their
aptpackage installations are going to be installing differently-packaged software that has its own set of problems. If we get to a point where Flatpaks have a similar problem to Snaps, we've taken a wrong turn, and it will only hurt Linux adoption.Honestly, that sounds great.
My biggest problem with Flatpak is that Flathub has all sorts of weird crap, and depending on your UI it's not always easy to tell what's official and what's just from some rando. I don't want a repo full of "unverified" packages to be a first-class citizen in my distro.
Distros can and should curate packages. That's half the point of a distro.
And yes, the idea of packaging dependencies in their own isolated container per-app comes with real downsides: I can't simply patch a library once at the system level.
I'm running a Fedora derivative and I wasn't even aware of this option. I'm going to look into it now because it sounds better than Flathub.
Why don't you like fedora flatpaks?
Among other reasons, Fedora ensure that apps get a flatpak. Imagine there was no official flatpak, fedora would've made one. Just like fedora ensures that there are native ways to install it via dnf. On atomic distros, you want to use flatpaks very often. Hence it makes sense to package apps via flatpak.
Fedora ensures that there is not additional code in the app kind of like fdroid on phones.
Anyone can make flatpaks, not just the main dev.
I answered most of this in the other thread, but I am aware that anyone can make flatpaks. What I meant is that flatpaks were supposed to make it easier for devs to get their software to end users by allowing them to not have to worry about distro-specific packaging requirements or formats.
But when someone else takes it upon themselves to make broken flatpaks, ones that you've requested they stop doing, now they're making things worse for everyone involved and should be considered a hostile fork and treated as such.
It reads as if fedora wanted to created a broke package. As if it was on purpose to annoy everyone. Do you think that was their intention?
The OBS and Bottles packages have been broken for a long time. Long enough that both upstream projects asked them to stop many months ago. They don't get to pretend it was a mistake. This isn't just another case of a minor packaging bug getting to users. They are packaging the software incorrectly.
Not OP, but for me the issue is if you want to override the default and make it opt-out, especially sine the opt-out process isn't that well documented, then you should realize that support is a necessary part of that process and fix problems as they arise rather than resorting to name calling and hostile behavior when something you published is broken. It's a responsibility of taking on that kind of project. Either that or make it explicitly opt-in and give users a warning like with beta version opt-in notifications that the packages are not official and issues may not be fixed as quickly as the official releases.