Canonical Unveils The Ubuntu Software Store

[Rahux]

I think this has fantastic potential because it would encourage the porting of commercial applications. The flip side is, as stated, that it discourages free apps to a degree. I think overall though, it would ease the feeling by many commercial developers that Linux users will be unwilling to pay for any software. I am thinking here particularly about games. Making paid apps easier to get are more easily supported, a la andrid market, would be a boon to the viability of creating linux apps for companies.

I agree that I would want to keep synaptic and gdebi for ease, speed and tweaking but this also depends on how they plan to design the app store (am too lazy to try out the first build).

The other obvious disadvantage to the above positive would be the specificity of this to ubuntu, again limiting its potential to promote commercial application development.

[Yfrwlf]

I think Canonical and other companies should be focusing on selling closed source programs which, after getting so many purchases, would have to change their licenses to open source ones. Paying for development in little pieces/bounties or in bigger blobs is IMO the way of the future. Consumers want to and will share software, so companies need to accept that fact and adjust their business models accordingly.

The Ubuntu store should be a place where you can buy slices of a project/program which will be open source upon release or whatnot, or where you can pay for small features to an existing program to be added and then open sourced. Ideally that's what the future should be, is paying developers directly or nearly directly for their work, just as any other artist or laborer takes commissions now days.

Such a system would lay the whole "piracy" thing to rest.

[liam]

It is possible that they will simply submerge the advanced features of Synaptic into the menus and make it look like app-install. This would make things a lot cleaner and more simple, IMO. Of course, if they tie this to themselves it will make it less nice for the other distros... but that may not be a bad thing. Ubuntu has done much to make linux an easy user environment, and Shuttleworth is the kind of guy linux needs. If they add proprietary apps to the store(maybe a co-operative with CodeWeavers) this could give linux a really big boost.
Also, I don't think of this as advertisement but rather a way to give most users(not just stereotypical nix users) an easier way to add features to their desktop. So what if Canonical makes a bit of money? I'd rather them(canonical) get it and put it back into development of the platform than lose the user to Windows/Apple. At any rate, it's only the package gui, how much time do most users spend in there on an average day? It's not as though Canonical plastered "buy service from us!", "want to run Word?" all over the desktop. It's in one place and to view the advertisements requires one actually open the app(much like one encounters ads in the browser, though it's not precisely the same, I realize).
Again, this is all assuming they leave Synaptic functionality(maybe even add some of the nice features in OpenSuse package gui).

This was a bit scattershot, so please ignore the order a bit

Best/Liam

[Feech]

-You can't make software installation more idiot-friendly!
Mark Shuttleworth: Yes we can!

"they are hoping to have improved sharing and tracking of software within the Ubuntu Software Store and the abilities to see what software your friends may have installed"

Oh yeah, they have found the missing piece.

[nanonyme]

I doubt they'd put any non-free applications on the store anyway. Designing a safe system for money transaction isn't trivial.

[V!NCENT]

"they are hoping to have improved sharing and tracking of software within the Ubuntu Software Store and the abilities to see what software your friends may have installed"

Oh yeah, they have found the missing piece.

You can also just uncheck that. Isn't this asked upon startup if one wants to participate in such survey in order for the Ubuntu devs to see where the biggest quality control should go to?

[unix_epoch]

The Ubuntu store should be a place where you can buy slices of a project/program which will be open source upon release or whatnot, or where you can pay for small features to an existing program to be added and then open sourced. Ideally that's what the future should be, is paying developers directly or nearly directly for their work, just as any other artist or laborer takes commissions now days.

I like this idea. It probably wouldn't work for every project, but it worked for Blender. Open source developers need more money-making tools in our collective kits that still allow us to provide the freedom to learn from and expand the software we make.

I doubt they'd put any non-free applications on the store anyway. Designing a safe system for money transaction isn't trivial.

Nobody has to design a safe system for money transaction these days, since that's already been done by PayPal, PayFlow, and dozens of other systems that provide a secure API to application developers for conducting financial transactions. Run your server with the strongest encryption, hire a competent security-conscious web developer, and the rest is trivial (by comparison).

[unix_epoch]

The whole application store concept is a good one. I worked on early versions of a similar dpkg-based effort back in 2001 called Click-n-Run. Now that Apple has proven the concept can be successful, it's appropriate for another Linux distribution to try again. Since Ubuntu, and Linux in general, have more clout than my former employer did back in 2001, I hope this effort will be successful, and developers like myself will have an additional avenue for writing Free software for a living (even if it's software-for-ransom style).