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> Snappy is an Ubuntu/Canonical project and FlatPak is a Fedora/RedHat/FreeDesktop project. Snappy and FlatPak are remarkably similar and kind of mirror the DEB

by sjellis 10y ago

> Snappy is an Ubuntu/Canonical project and FlatPak is a Fedora/RedHat/FreeDesktop project. Snappy and FlatPak are remarkably similar and kind of mirror the DEB/RPM spit. This isn't actually a good analogy, because Flatpak was designed from the ground-up to be vendor-neutral. For example, the "runtimes" that provide the virtual Linux distribution for applications to work in are built with packages and tools from the Linux Foundation's Yocto project. Similarly, the code is deliberately hosted on GitHub with no CLA so that all contributors are on neutral ground (there is at least one Debian developer involved). The main developer is a Red Hat employee, and could have used Fedora or CentOS packages, tools and infrastructure, but explicitly chose not to do that, to protect Flatpak's neutrality. He also builds Flatpak for Ubuntu, Arch and other distributions, so that people can freely use Flatpak on their systems even where it isn't currently supported by their distribution of choice.

Sean1708 10y ago
> because Flatpak was designed from the ground-up to be vendor-neutral As have all the others, hence the "distro-agnostic" part of Matthew's comment.
- ugos 10y ago
  True Snap are technically distro-agnostic but still Snap is surrounded by a "brought to you by Canonical™" feeling. Even if you look at the terms used : https://snapcraft.io/docs/core/store https://snapcraft.io/docs/core/store : "The main way of distributing snaps to snapd systems is through the Ubuntu Store" So indeed there is the "other store" section which mention you can host your own store but it's clearly not emphasized. Even the term of Snap "store" vs Flatpack "repo" seems to indicates a more decentralized/agnostic direction of Flatpack. On flatpak.org/apps.html you can see LibreOffice hosted by documentfoundation.org and MonoDevelop hosted by mono-project.com. They're not all hosted by their respective foundation/website, but still it kinda seems like it is the direction flatpack is pushing for. So "technically" they all are distro-agnostic, but in terms of distribution system one is pushing for a centralized Canonical-hosted store while the other seems to be going towards a "each foundation will host their app"
  - dustinkirkland 10y ago
    Omg! How dare an open source project, led by Canonical, have a "brought to you by Canonical" feeling! That's just awful. Did you know that Canonical also doesn't contribute upstream, and instead uses that time to club baby seals for fun! I seen em!
  - wmf 10y ago
    IMO Flatpak has a pretty "brought to you by GNOME/Fedora" feeling.
    - sjellis 10y ago
      GNOME and Fedora are definitely further ahead, since the lead developer for Flatpak is a long-time GNOME contributor as well as a Red Hat employee. There are Flatpak contributors focusing on other things: at least two developers are working on KDE integration, and a Debian developer at Collabora maintains the Flatpak package that is currently in Debian testing for release in Debian 9.0.

by sjellis 10y ago

Sean1708 10y ago

> because Flatpak was designed from the ground-up to be vendor-neutral As have all the others, hence the "distro-agnostic" part of Matthew's comment.

ugos 10y ago
True Snap are technically distro-agnostic but still Snap is surrounded by a "brought to you by Canonical™" feeling. Even if you look at the terms used : https://snapcraft.io/docs/core/store https://snapcraft.io/docs/core/store : "The main way of distributing snaps to snapd systems is through the Ubuntu Store" So indeed there is the "other store" section which mention you can host your own store but it's clearly not emphasized. Even the term of Snap "store" vs Flatpack "repo" seems to indicates a more decentralized/agnostic direction of Flatpack. On flatpak.org/apps.html you can see LibreOffice hosted by documentfoundation.org and MonoDevelop hosted by mono-project.com. They're not all hosted by their respective foundation/website, but still it kinda seems like it is the direction flatpack is pushing for. So "technically" they all are distro-agnostic, but in terms of distribution system one is pushing for a centralized Canonical-hosted store while the other seems to be going towards a "each foundation will host their app"
- dustinkirkland 10y ago
  Omg! How dare an open source project, led by Canonical, have a "brought to you by Canonical" feeling! That's just awful. Did you know that Canonical also doesn't contribute upstream, and instead uses that time to club baby seals for fun! I seen em!
- wmf 10y ago
  IMO Flatpak has a pretty "brought to you by GNOME/Fedora" feeling.
  - sjellis 10y ago
    GNOME and Fedora are definitely further ahead, since the lead developer for Flatpak is a long-time GNOME contributor as well as a Red Hat employee. There are Flatpak contributors focusing on other things: at least two developers are working on KDE integration, and a Debian developer at Collabora maintains the Flatpak package that is currently in Debian testing for release in Debian 9.0.