6 months later, and with about 150 apps now meeting the Flathub metadata guidelines I'm a bit confused that it's still overwhelmingly GTK apps (>90%).

Like, do people developing on other stacks not care about their app listing? Do they primarily use channels other than Flathub? Have they not made new releases in the past year? Have we just been particularly good at mobilizing people to care about this from the GNOME side?

@tbernard the #Fedora #flatpak repo has a fair deal of #Plasma packages in it, and that's probably because the Fedora community has been porting desktop apps over to it.

I have a cynical take though. I believe that #designers and #UX experts gravitate more towards #Gtk/ #Adwaita because it is more modern. Plasma/ #Origami has come a long way, but is still not as enticing as Gtk/Adwaita. This becomes a little barrier to entry in of it self, IMHO. It also means there is more Gtk #abandonware.

@tbernard I definitrly feel there's a perception that Flathub, and even Flatpak, is a GNOME/GTK thing.

@thomholwerda @tbernard Yes, this feeling is pretty prevalent. It doesn't help that the Flathub website and all the guidance documentation are very GNOME centric or tilted very heavily toward GNOME applications.

@hopland @tbernard gtk bindings for most languages exist by having proper C language access. It's really hard to develop in any language not blessed in for the kde / qt libs.

@vascorsd @tbernard

How could forget the licensing issue? It is ofc the biggest issue, the elephant in the room that #KDE has a problem facing.

I suggest a cold room reverse engineering of the #Qt ABI and API, which is a tall order, and would probably require a fair deal of money, but it could make Plasma libre friendly - and therefore more acceptable by open source advocates.

Instead of Qt, call it Ug - and make it beautiful, libre, backend capable and web-friendly.

@hopland @vascorsd @tbernard We don't have a problem with Qt licensing. It's *fine*. Qt is FOSS and has been FOSS for over 20 years. The Qt stack and the KDE frameworks are LGPL, and the applications are all GPL. It doesn't get more free than that.

@tbernard GNOME Core and Circle lean heavily into the same recommendations, distribution on Flathub, etc. It’s not a bad thing at all, but I’d be curious to see if we can replicate that success with other app dev ecosystems.

Like, we should aim to get it into the Electron docs that to build and distribute a Linux app, you follow the same/similar metadata guidelines at least. Same w/KDE. Idk if other toolkits have as centralized docs, but if they do, we should try to contribute similarly there.

@tbernard We should lean into AppStream MetaInfo being *the* standard for app metadata on Linux, and remind folks that Flathub has the most helpful and well-documented guidelines for that metadata—regardless of where people intend to distribute. Then if they already meet the guidelines, it’s less of a barrier to get it into shape “just for Flathub.”

@Conan_Kudo @vascorsd @tbernard

Ey, watch your attitude - at least come with a reason why people choose #Gtk over #Qt.

Is it because of the lack of C level libraries compatible with other programming languages, UX, or might it be pissy knowitalls that jump down peoples throats with bad manners? Has that helped you at all, or do you need some form of group therapy for your anger issues?

Please, tell me - what's your take?

@hopland @vascorsd @tbernard You're the one who said we need to fork Qt because it has a licensing problem. There is no issue here. Qt's business is that they sell exceptions for commercial applications for platforms where FOSS isn't wanted. That is irrelevant to us.

@tbernard We are working on it on the KDE side of things for all our apps but it takes time.

@Conan_Kudo @vascorsd @tbernard oh! They sell exceptions now! So what, 10,000 users and the lawyers come barging in? Doesn't sound very FLOSS to me.

Seems like there's an exception for #KDE that doesn't extend to developers in general, and so the developers won't use it as much.

Again, the LGPL is a bit lightweight in regards to protecting user rights, and if it's GPL v2, then it's weaker than GPL v3.

But again, what do YOU think the issue is?

@hopland @vascorsd @tbernard They've always sold exceptions. The default license for Qt has been LGPL since Qt4 (it was GPL before that in Qt3, and QPL in Qt2). It's been LGPLv3 since Qt 5.7.

The main issue for why Flathub is mostly GNOME applications is that people are not interested and excited about Flathub outside of GNOME. The project is viewed as GNOME-centric, even down to the website design and metadata guidelines.

@Conan_Kudo @hopland @vascorsd @tbernard I think commercially copyleft is the next thing growing up. Signal showed how AGPL can be turned into profitable business in an end user product and its governance properties tackle AI threats nicely.

On the other hand AI literally assrapes MIT/Apache code. IMHO Qt licensing is today even more optimal than it was maybe few years back.

@Conan_Kudo @hopland @tbernard @vascorsd They said that GPL or even LGPL is "communist code". What actually has realized is that it is best possible way for e.g. a company be open source and at the same protect their IP rights in the current hostile environments with AI's and bots lurking every corner ;-)

@cassidy I'd be in favor of that, but without some kind of review system like we have in Flathub I have a hard time imagining how that would scale. Is there anyone else who has an actual review process?

@tbernard the idea is to set the Flathub recommendations as "best practice" across the ecosystem—you'd still have the same review process in Flathub, but hopefully the apps coming to us would start out much closer to meeting them from the start. :)

It's a long game, for sure, but I do think the de facto adoption of Flathub guidelines in GNOME is the reason we see so many GNOME apps meeting them.

@tbernard And Flathub is THE place to distribute GNOME apps, whereas for other cross-platform apps, Flathub is *one of many* distribution points.

So we work to change the conversation a bit from "make these changes just for Flathub" to "these are best practices for any app on Linux."

That was basically my approach with my "How to make a great app listing" talks in the past, too.

@Conan_Kudo @thomholwerda @tbernard that's what happens, when mostly people from gnome reach out and help

@razze @thomholwerda @tbernard Admittedly, GNOME created the whole thing for themselves in the first place. Flatpak started out as xdg-app made by folks in the GNOME community.

It's not that surprising that it's like this. It's surprising that folks in the GNOME community expected more than that, though.

@cassidy I guess the question is, what channels do we have to reach out to "Linux app developers"? Does the average Electron app developer even see themselves as that, seeing as they're just shipping a cross-platform thing, and maybe not even developing on Linux?

For some stuff it'd be good to just get it into the appstream linters, but that doesn't work for many of the more important criteria.

@tbernard we have the Electron docs. :) That’s what I’m saying, at least: we should go to where the developers are. Help ingrain it as just “part of the process.” Reduce the amount of surprise developers have when they get to Flathub, and say, “Wait, I have to change *all of this* just to be optionally ‘featured’ on this tiny (relative to Windows/macOS/Android/iOS) platform? Not worth my time!”

@tbernard Ditto with KDE app developer documentation. We need folks who are super passionate about Flathub AND those app development platforms to champion it, though.

Idk if it’ll work, but I think that’s the closest opportunity we have to replicate the success we’ve had with GNOME apps following the guidelines. Otherwise I don’t see why cross-platform apps would bother, assuming we’re an afterthought to them.

@tbernard I mean, at the same time: grow Flathub to be more well-known and continue to hammer home that it is *the* place to distribute apps for Linux, and that to be really well-received here you gotta follow those guidelines. But that’s in parallel to trying to instill those guidelines into the development practices of different app dev platforms, I think.

@tbernard another thing we should do better (mostly looking at myself…) is just general developer outreach/advocacy. I’ve been wanting to dig into this a lot more but haven’t made the time. :(

Maybe I should write another blog post, lol—that seems to be my motivator.

@tbernard alright, I didn't do a blog post (I might still cook something up), but I asked this question a bit more verbosely over on our Flathub Discourse: https://discourse.flathub.org/t/app-developer-feedback-about-quality-guidelines/8037

@tbernard many care but they don't want to bother changing the way they present themselves. The guidelines are obviously heavily influenced by GNOME's HIG, which doesn't fit every project's guidelines or branding

@TheEvilSkeleton Not sure I follow, do you have an example?

@tbernard sure - https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/metainfo-guidelines/quality-guidelines#in-line-with-contemporary-styles

Not every project wants to use 2D–skeuomorphic designs, usually for personal reasons, but we [GNOME] use those styles for personal and identity reasons as well

@TheEvilSkeleton Yes - I think the developer guidelines are far too biased in pushing things in the direction of being like GNOME.

@TheEvilSkeleton That's not what the guidelines are actually saying though? It just says icons should fit in and not be super dated. There's even an explicit parapgraph about how to make unusual styles work right there below the examples...

Is the problem just that there's no example of a buttonized square icon?

@tbernard "super dated" is subjective, but even then, the maintainers might like the "dated" style a lot more

@tbernard @TheEvilSkeleton for screenshots, the "include window shadow and rounded corners" is somewhat gnome centric as not all DEs expect rounded corners. Additionally, not all apps *can* do this, e.g. Electron doesn't support rounded corners on Linux

@TheEvilSkeleton I mean in many cases it literally isn't. If an icon uses the orignal Tango style in 2024 it's using guidelines that haven't been in force for 10+ years.

Developers are of course free to use whatever icons they want, but if you're part of an ecosystem it's just good practice to be aware of and responsive to what others around you are doing.

@tbernard @TheEvilSkeleton but what ecosystem are they supposedly part of here? The ecosystem they consider their app to exist in could still be using those guidelines or something similar.

@brainblasted @TheEvilSkeleton Do you have any examples of apps like that on Flathub? I see your point in theory, but in practice it's just a reality that most apps are developed for/around the major desktops.

@tbernard @TheEvilSkeleton this, imo, is the actual reason why flathub seems to cater only for GNOME.

all xfce and xapps will look "super dated" according to these terms.

@tbernard @brainblasted @TheEvilSkeleton the problem is that such developers see the flathub as GNOME-centric, so they don’t bother publishing there.

I can think of xfce and mint applications as examples. It would be nice to include their communities in flathub discussions imo