Cross-distro Meeting on Application Installer

(application installer, or app store, market place, software center, etc. -- many names for one thing ;-))

Goals

Blue-sky goals:

  • agree on a common UI to install applications
  • agree on what metadata to use, how to generate it, where to host it
  • agree on a protocol to use to provide non-static metadata (featured apps, ratings, comments, etc.)
  • decide what metadata can be shared between distros, and what should stay distro-specific (eg: do we want user comments to be shared?) In reality, if it turns out we can't all agree on one item, it's still fine: it doesn't mean we can't collaborate on the other items. And some distros might still work together.

It's worth mentioning here that what matters to us is the end-user experience. It matters more than the technical implementation.

Background

Nearly all distributions are slowly moving towards making it easier to deal with applications, and get information about those. The Ubuntu Software Center is a good example of work being done here.

At the moment, many of us are working in our own corners, while we could certainly all move much faster if we worked together, especially since we're all targetting mostly the same result.

We do want content to be provided not just by us, distributors, but also by the users: their experience with an application can inspire other users to install it too.

Sponsors

The events is sponsored by Novell (hosting, sponsorship of three attendees) and Debian (sponsorship of one attendee).

Many thanks also to Canonical and Red Hat for sending people to this event!

Who/Where/When

January 19th-21st, in Nürnberg, Germany.

The goal is to have the event around the same time as the Bretzn meeting, which covers related topics, but from a different perspective.

We want key people from various distributions (10-15 people max).

Interested people

Name Distro Need sponsorship? Staying at Azimut Hotel Hotel booked
John Doe Tux Distro Yes (~150€) Yes, 18-22 Yes
Richard Hughes Fedora No (thanks Red Hat!) Yes, 18-22 Yes
Michael Vogt Ubuntu No (thanks Canonical!) Yes, 18-21 Yes
Vincent Untz openSUSE No (thanks Novell!) Yes, 18-23 Yes
Alexander Naumov openSUSE No (local) No Not needed
Frank Karlitschek KDE/openDesktop.org Yes, sponsored by Novell ? ?
Pavol Rusnak openSUSE No (thanks Novell!) Yes, 18-23 Yes
Enrico Zini Debian Yes, sponsored by Novell Yes, 18-21 Yes
David Kalnischkies Debian Yes, sponsored by Debian! Yes, 18-21 Yes
Samuel Verschelde Mageia Yes, sponsored by Novell Yes, 18-22 Yes
Olivier Thauvin Mageia No (thanks to you!) Yes, 18-22 Yes
Michael Scherer Mageia No (thanks to you!) Yes, 18-22 Yes
Duncan Mac-Vicar (?) openSUSE No (local) No Not needed
Florian Festi Fedora No (thanks Red Hat!) Yes, 18-21 Yes
Michael Schroeder openSUSE No (local) No Not needed
Sebastian Heinlein Ubuntu No Yes (19-20) ?

Results

  • Video Recording 53m:06s: Presenting the Summary of Cross-Distro Application Installer Meeting January 19th-21st, in Nürnberg, Germany.

Some related work

Source