1.5 - gnome-packagekit?

[Neil Graham]

On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 02:55 -0500, Walter Bender wrote:

> Slightly off topic, but reading between the lines, it seems there is
> something more fundamentally broken here. 5000 packages. The Apple app
> store adds that many new "apps" every week it seems. Why aren't there
> 5 million packages available instead of just 5000? What are we doing
> wrong as a community? I have lots of theories but would be curious if
> anyone had any concrete ideas. (Or maybe 5000 packages is better than
> 100000 apps and all is well in the world?)
Well as I mentioned above, I'm working on my own environment thingy.
Because I don't want to have to write everything myself, I have had to
hunt for the right tool for each job.

It is quite the task,  it is one thing to say 'I know I'll use standard
package X'  It's something else completely to go hunting to see if there
is something better.  

There is a _lot_ of stuff out there that is not in repos. A lot of it is
crap, but that could be said for the contents of repos too.  The
proportion of good to bad I'm unsure of.  I am more sure that the
smaller the project, the more likely that it won't be available as
anything but a tarball.

Even given that I don't think there is as much out there as there should
be.  If I have a go at making something there are always those standing
on the sidelines making derisive comments and saying 'just use
[inappropriate program X]'.   I think it's a telling sign that there is
no good open alternative to flash.  There should be a pile of them each
trying different ways to do things,  the better ones could then grow
into something mature.

I could rant all night on this issue.  I don't think there is any one
problem, I think it's a myriad of things.  Attitudes, bureaucracy and
just plain difficulty all play a part.