Novell Ponders "Open-Source Apps Store"

Barence writes "Novell plans to bring the wealth of open-source software to everyday users through an 'open-source apps store.' 'I would compare what's happening on netbooks with what's happening to the smartphone,' Holger Dyroff, vice president of business development at Novell told PC Pro. 'There's a core experience, but then the ability to customise that experience. On the user end, all they'll see is an open-source applications store with one-click downloads of new software. Unlike the other stores though, they won't have to pay for any of those applications, which will be very attractive.'"

Comments

So, in other words

[killmenow]

Kind of like a repository?

Re:So, in other words

[nurb432]

or pkg_add -r for us BSD folks :)

But, all joking aside, you cant discount making it easy for the common guy with a simple GUI, non technical descriptions, screen shots, etc etc.

PCBSD's PBI pages are a good example of how things could work

Apt

[Hatta]

How does this differ from any of the GUI front ends available for Debian's apt?

Re:Apt

[kj_kabaje]

making FOSS more consumer friendly is not a bad thing. giving people freedom of choice the can understand versus paying for limited choice seems to be pretty good. who cares if it's just a web-based on downloadable interface for apt?

Re:Apt

[jcupitt65]

I think you're missing the key point of a repository: it's a (large) set of software packages that are tested to work together. If you let devs update their packages willy-nilly, you're going to get horrible breakage very quickly.

Apple's app-store works because there are almost never (as far as I know) dependencies between apps. Updating an app might break the user's savefiles I guess, but it won't stop another app working. To make an analogy: an app store which devs can update can only ever contain leaves, you can't put any twigs/branches/trunk in there.

I suppose you can imagine an app store built on top of apt. An extra repository which is guaranteed to only contain packages upon which nothing else depends, and which has much looser restrictions on updates.

Terrible idea.

[LWATCDR]

As many people will say it is a just a repository.
They may add reviews and ratings which will be a good thing but they shouldn't limit it to free as in beer software.
There is nothing that says you can not sell FOSS if they feel that they must keep it open source. I would open it up to closed source software as well so you can create a real market for Linux software.
If you have both open and closed source developers you will have MORE software choices. You may have both GIMP and Photoshop Elements. GnuCash and Quicken, and SQLedger and QuickBooks.

I know the many Linux users find the idea of paying for anything to be evil but if you want more Linux users you need to find a way to get more Linux software.
One thing I really like about an app store is that it really seems to drive down the price of software. Look on the iPhone App store and you will find a lot of $1.99 to $5 software. Some of it is pretty good. There is also a lot of free as in beer software. It does offer a way for programmers to make money and offers the end user a large selection of software.
And that is a great way to get more Netbook users happy with Linux and more developers developing for Linux. It could even help FOSS. A lot of professional developers do FOSS on the side. If they can make a living using Linux they will be motivated to do more FOSS projects as well.

Re:Replying to self

[Gerald]

Sourceforge lacks the polish of a true app store. Techies are comfortable with it, but it would be confusing to a mass audience.

"Comfortable" is a relative term. "Able to wade through all of the dead projects and locate the useful bits" would be more accurate. Same with Freshmeat.