Hello, I was originally against Mark's ideas, but I think I finally got his point. I'll try my best at explaining the argument as clearly as possible.
On Thu, 2010-09-16 at 18:42 +0100, David Greaves wrote: > On 16/09/10 17:24, Skarpness, Mark wrote: > > > > On Sep 16, 2010, at 4:36 AM, David Greaves wrote: > >> So... a vendor has the freedom to forbid certain MeeGo compliant apps on > >> their device/store? > > Yes > > Good. > > >> If MeeGo then permits Surrounds-dependent apps to be labelled "Compliant" > >> then there is no addidional burden placed on a vendor since they can simply > >> refuse to allow them on their device/store? > > > No - that is a different problem. If compliance says that compliant apps > > can > > have external dependencies, > > As it does: http://wiki.meego.com/images/MeeGo-Compliance-Spec-1.0.80.8.pdf > line 231/232 I believe that part of the spec will have to be changed. > > then every compliant device MUST support those > > dependencies and ensure they are available to every device. That is the > > burden we are debating. > > If I make a package that is api-compliant and self-contained and put it in > Extras then that can be labelled compliant. By your definition it offers no > burden. I agree that it can be labelled compliant. > If I install a 2nd application that is compliant then it too offers no burden. > > If the 2nd differs because it "depends" on the first one then what additional > burden exists? If no external dependencies are allowed, the device vendor only has the burden of providing the core api. Since every device provides this api, every compliant app is guaranteed to be able to run on the device. If a developer wants an application to run on all Meego devices, the developer has only one task: get the app in enough repositories so that they together cover every Meego device. If external dependencies, let's say to compliant software in the Surrounds repo, are allowed, then the device vendor must provide access to the Surrounds repo. That is the additional burden. Now you probably ask why it is mandatory to provide access to Surrounds. Because if it's not mandatory, and a developer wants the application to run on all Meego devices, then the developer has two tasks: get the app in enough repositories so that they together cover every Meego device AND convince the all device vendors to enable the Surrounds repo. The difference between the two tasks is that getting an app in enough repositories is not necessarily a technical problem, and hopefully possible to solve in most cases, but getting all device vendors to enable some external repo (e.g. Surrounds) is probably pretty impossible. Therefore, allowing external dependencies causes severe fragmentation among "Meego Compliant" applications. There are probably Meego compliant applications that have no chance to get accepted in all repositories, which also causes fragmentation, but I guess people are expecting that fragmentation to be small enough to be tolerable. I was a bit disappointed when I realized this. This means that many "Meego Compliant" applications will contain who knows how old and insecure library versions bundled with the main app. The "Meego Compliant" label won't have any value for me personally, I'll stick to the properly packaged Extras... -- Tanu Kaskinen _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
