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Yes, it is my job as a software developer to distribute software to my users. Having distributions pick-up my software and distribute it themselves is a plus,

Yes, it is my job as a software developer to distribute software to my users. Having distributions pick-up my software and distribute it themselves is a plus, but until my application has thousands of users that won't happen. And in order to reach that "thousands of users" my users do need to be able to actually use my application (open source or not); this means either I or them has to do all that work... So yes, one needs to "have experience in creating and maintaining packages for every distribution that exists"; or as I've proposed, just skip all this hassle and provide single binary executables for the platforms (not distributions) that one supports.

chlorion 5y ago
You seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. I never said its not your job to distribute your software to your users in general, I said it is not your job to distribute via distro specific packages and repos. Even if you wanted to do this you can't since you don't have the necessary permissions to contribute code to most or even any of the repos in question. I am not against providing a static binary or image (or whatever) by the way, this is probably the best thing that you can do! I was just trying to clear up the misunderstanding about distro specific packages and who creates and maintains them since most people don't have much experience with the process. It's also worth nothing that this isn't really a one way or the other deal, you can provide a portable method and people can package your software eventually. I think the two styles work very well with each other.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
I haven't tried submitting any programs I wrote to Linux distributions, so I don't know how easy it is to find people in Debian, Fedora, and possibly OpenSUSE to package an app with no users yet, or to write your own OpenSUSE or Ubuntu PPA or Arch AUR package to distribute your app. Nonetheless I hear horror stories like https://lwn.net/Articles/884301/ https://lwn.net/Articles/884301/ saying that new packages have been waiting for up to 11 months to be reviewed. (Right now, https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html has 55 packages down from 208, and 9 of the 55 packages have been waiting for over a month to be reviewed.)

chlorion 5y ago

You seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. I never said its not your job to distribute your software to your users in general, I said it is not your job to distribute via distro specific packages and repos. Even if you wanted to do this you can't since you don't have the necessary permissions to contribute code to most or even any of the repos in question. I am not against providing a static binary or image (or whatever) by the way, this is probably the best thing that you can do! I was just trying to clear up the misunderstanding about distro specific packages and who creates and maintains them since most people don't have much experience with the process. It's also worth nothing that this isn't really a one way or the other deal, you can provide a portable method and people can package your software eventually. I think the two styles work very well with each other.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

I haven't tried submitting any programs I wrote to Linux distributions, so I don't know how easy it is to find people in Debian, Fedora, and possibly OpenSUSE to package an app with no users yet, or to write your own OpenSUSE or Ubuntu PPA or Arch AUR package to distribute your app. Nonetheless I hear horror stories like https://lwn.net/Articles/884301/ https://lwn.net/Articles/884301/ saying that new packages have been waiting for up to 11 months to be reviewed. (Right now, https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html has 55 packages down from 208, and 9 of the 55 packages have been waiting for over a month to be reviewed.)