[Mageia-discuss] a cross-distribution meeting about software installers

Sat Jan 8 23:16:00 CET 2011

Hi,
+
+Vincent Untz from Novell, who works on openSuse, invited us (and contributers 
+from other distributions, including Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu) to participate 
+in a meeting about software installers and the end-user experience.
+
+Here is how Vincent presents the project :
+
+----- Quote ----- 
+*** 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. 
+The goals of this meeting is to see what can be put in common and harmonized 
+between various distributions, from the end-user point of view.
+----- End of quote ----- 
+
+The meeting will occur in Nürnberg, Germany from January 19th to 21st
+
+We don't know yet what the outcome of this 3-days meeting will be, but it may 
+be a great opportunity.
+
+For the mageia side, the participants will be :
+- Michael Scherer (misc)
+- Olivier Thauvin (Nanar), author of Sophie, the cross-distribution RPM 
+database,
+- Samuel Verschelde (Stormi), for the mageia-app-db project.
+
+Best regards
+
+Samuel Verschelde
+