7 ms·

A letter to Microsoft for not attributing authors of the Edge Flatpak app

128 points by kirbyfan64sos 5y ago

Sunspark 5y ago
These fellows did work for free for Microsoft? Very generous of them.
causality0 5y ago
Considering the anti-user trajectory Edge has been on as of late I'm surprised anyone would want to work on the flatpak version.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Why would anyone do free work for MS? Or use Edge on Linux? Sounds like the author just wants a job at MS.
- locusofself 5y ago
  Pretty lousy way to try to get hired
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    Agreed yet this 'letter' exists.
- tester756 5y ago
  > Or use Edge on Linux? What's wrong with Edge?
  - sofixa 5y ago
    It has ads for loans in it. Even without such Microsoft-introduced crap, the better question is what's good about Edge? Why use it over any other Chromium-based browser or Firefox? At the moment there's exactly one good reason - if you have a Steam Deck and want cloud gaming, because it's the only browser that supports it.
    - dikei 5y ago
      I'm using Edge because it has excellent vertical tabs UI, better than any other browsers.
jjnoakes 5y ago
Is it normal for unofficial apps to use namespaces like "com.microsoft.Edge"? Or am I misreading?
- Polycryptus 5y ago
  That's a matter of repository policy, but yes, Flathub (by far the largest and most popular repository) allows for this. I believe that they generally put a disclaimer that it's not an official package in the description, and allow the upstream developer to claim the application ID for themselves if they wish to maintain it.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  It was a GNOME thing, and they pushed it on Flatpak.
  - kirbyfan64sos 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure OP is referring to the use of reverse DNS names for unofficial apps in particular, not the naming scheme's general use. It's also not really "pushed" onto Flatpak: significant parts of the ecosystem already use the scheme, so Flatpak following along allows an app to keep the same name across multiple different places (desktop file, D-Bus name, etc).
bfung 5y ago
I agree that there's no attribution to probably piles of software that is used to get https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-in-microsoft-edge-with-steam-deck-43dd011b-0ce8-4810-8302-965be6d53296 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-... to work. However, flatpak is only mentioned twice, both as "run this command" in step 4 - hardly a "We at microsoft wrote this and you should use it" type of "promotion". As someone who uses very little Microsoft and doesn't use Steam, I don't even know what "Edge flatpak" is, nor even what the flatpak command does or is. I don't think there's going to be much "outrage" to be generated here.
- 8jy89hui 5y ago
  As per [1]: > “We worked closely with Valve and the Xbox Cloud Gaming team to bring support for Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate through Microsoft Edge Beta for the Steam Deck,” says Missy Quarry, a community manager for Microsoft Edge. Then there is a tweet which links to this reddit post. That reddit post has you install the Microsoft Edge flatpak. If you search using DDG or Google for "edge runs on steam deck", you will see that there are multiple news articles reporting on how Microsoft has worked with Valve to get Edge running on the Steam Deck. All of these use the flatpak mentioned in the post. I can absolutely see why the author of the flatpak would want at least some attribution instead of Microsoft announcing that they alone have gotten Edge running on the deck. Also, it is worth it to read the Wikipedia page on flatpak if you don't understand what flatpak is. It is a really important technology if you want to understand why the author is mad. [1] : https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/microsoft_edge_beta_the_browser_for_xbox_cloud/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/micro... [2] : https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/microsoft_edge_beta_the_browser_for_xbox_cloud/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/micro...
  - jahewson 5y ago
    None of those sources back up your claim. They all say that Microsoft has worked with Valve to get Xbox Cloud Gaming working on the Steam Deck and that this work utilises Edge. They also imply that Edge Beta includes explicit support for the Steam Deck controls, but I was not able to verify that. If so, then that would presumably be what Valve and the MS Edge team were collaborating on.
ILMostro7 5y ago
Meh, not gonna lose sleep worrying about helping MS expand its footprint, or why they would want to minimize someone else's contribution.
jahewson 5y ago
I disagree with this post. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author of the help article was under the impression that the package was Microsoft’s. Just look at the metadata, which is used in the UI: <id>com.microsoft.Edge</id> <name>Microsoft Edge</name> <developer_name>Microsoft Corporation</developer_name> You can’t go round claiming to be Microsoft and then add a disclaimer in the notes field that you’re not actually Microsoft, which they do, after four paragraphs of other text: > NOTE: This wrapper is not verified by, affiliated with, or supported by Microsoft. I don’t think this is an adequate way to surface such an important piece of information, one which arguably contradicts the package metadata. Flathub needs to figure this out.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >You can’t go round claiming to be Microsoft and then add a disclaimer in the notes field that you’re not actually Microsoft The developer_name element is for the developer of the application that is being packaged. It is not the name of the maintainer of the flatpak. >The <developer_name/> tag is designed to represent the developers or project responsible for development of the project described in the metadata. https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html#tag-developer_name https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Met...
  - jahewson 5y ago
    It may be designed that way but in practice it’s misleading, especially the way it appears in the UI. It looks like a designation of origin of the package. These are trademarks and can’t just be thrown around casually. Why is there not at least a packager or maintainer field?
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      >Why is there not at least a packager or maintainer field? On flathub the developer is the developer of the software being published and the publisher is the people who packaged it.
codetrotter 5y ago
Perhaps the article has been updated or perhaps I am missing something, but nothing in the linked article at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-in-microsoft-edge-with-steam-deck-43dd011b-0ce8-4810-8302-965be6d53296 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-... made me think specifically that Microsoft are in charge of the Flatpak packaging. Nor that they weren’t. But I also don’t see why this article would or should specifically mention who had happened to package the app. If anything, I would say that it would be more reasonable to instead ask Valve to highlight who is packaging stuff. Valve is responsible for the representation of things on SteamOS, not Microsoft. Asking for credit for packaging in a random support article seems.. strange?
- kirbyfan64sos 5y ago
  This comment went into some more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30740164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30740164 I mentioned this to the article author, and they edited the post to include the Reddit announcement.
moojacob 5y ago
If Microsoft officially starts publishing their apps to Flathub then we could have a watershed moment for Flatpak adoption. One central app store for Linux. Pushing Microsoft to take over maintaining the Flatpak for Edge is only a good thing? HN should be supporting the Edge authors. Flatpak is really special technology. Joy to package, excellent end user experience, and completely open.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > we could have a watershed moment for Flatpak adoption. One central app store for Linux. Because that model worked so well for iOS and Android?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Depends on how you define worked well. iOS and Android are immensely successful on providing value to users on the UX front (think of how many smartphone users would have a hard time downloading and installing eg. 7-zip).
  - Spivak 5y ago
    You mean the packaging ecosystems that are so wildly successful they’re used by essentially 99.76% of smartphone users and 99.97% of tablet users? I think it worked out pretty well tbh. Would be an odd choice not to copy the model.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    It's not the same thing. Flatpak allows multiple remotes so anyone can publish their own packages.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  The point of picking a Linux distribution is buying into a package management scheme. If you want to pick the “flatpak” distro fine, but I’m sticking with apt or nix
  - Spivak 5y ago
charcircuit 5y ago
I don't think crediting packagers is a common thing it general. I can't think of a time an article / company credited packagers when telling you to apt get something.
bruhhh 5y ago
- Sunspark 5y ago
  Curious to know what was created here. Are Flatpaks copyrightable?
encryptluks2 5y ago
I see no reason to help Microsoft with anything when it comes to Linux. Edge isn't even open source is it? I don't see how this helps anyone to provide a Flatpak of a proprietary binary that will go to great lengths to take hostile actions against the user.
pigbearpig 5y ago
This is pretty ridiculous and a manufactured scandal. I'm sure attempting to publicly shame a company into a job offer will turn out well. I don't even see the problem, a help article says to install a browser? If I blog about how to install software, I have to give attribution to whomever packaged it? This is just absurd.
aneutron 5y ago
They sure seem to have a LOT of "oversights" of this kind. AppGet comes to mind when I read this. Either it's a cultural issue, or that the management are sorry they got caught. I'm thinking this is more of the second option.

128 points by kirbyfan64sos 5y ago

These fellows did work for free for Microsoft? Very generous of them.

Considering the anti-user trajectory Edge has been on as of late I'm surprised anyone would want to work on the flatpak version.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Why would anyone do free work for MS? Or use Edge on Linux? Sounds like the author just wants a job at MS.

locusofself 5y ago
Pretty lousy way to try to get hired
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Agreed yet this 'letter' exists.
tester756 5y ago
> Or use Edge on Linux? What's wrong with Edge?
- sofixa 5y ago
  It has ads for loans in it. Even without such Microsoft-introduced crap, the better question is what's good about Edge? Why use it over any other Chromium-based browser or Firefox? At the moment there's exactly one good reason - if you have a Steam Deck and want cloud gaming, because it's the only browser that supports it.
  - dikei 5y ago
    I'm using Edge because it has excellent vertical tabs UI, better than any other browsers.

jjnoakes 5y ago

Is it normal for unofficial apps to use namespaces like "com.microsoft.Edge"? Or am I misreading?

Polycryptus 5y ago
That's a matter of repository policy, but yes, Flathub (by far the largest and most popular repository) allows for this. I believe that they generally put a disclaimer that it's not an official package in the description, and allow the upstream developer to claim the application ID for themselves if they wish to maintain it.
smoldesu 5y ago
It was a GNOME thing, and they pushed it on Flatpak.
- kirbyfan64sos 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure OP is referring to the use of reverse DNS names for unofficial apps in particular, not the naming scheme's general use. It's also not really "pushed" onto Flatpak: significant parts of the ecosystem already use the scheme, so Flatpak following along allows an app to keep the same name across multiple different places (desktop file, D-Bus name, etc).

bfung 5y ago

I agree that there's no attribution to probably piles of software that is used to get https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-in-microsoft-edge-with-steam-deck-43dd011b-0ce8-4810-8302-965be6d53296 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-... to work. However, flatpak is only mentioned twice, both as "run this command" in step 4 - hardly a "We at microsoft wrote this and you should use it" type of "promotion". As someone who uses very little Microsoft and doesn't use Steam, I don't even know what "Edge flatpak" is, nor even what the flatpak command does or is. I don't think there's going to be much "outrage" to be generated here.

8jy89hui 5y ago
As per [1]: > “We worked closely with Valve and the Xbox Cloud Gaming team to bring support for Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate through Microsoft Edge Beta for the Steam Deck,” says Missy Quarry, a community manager for Microsoft Edge. Then there is a tweet which links to this reddit post. That reddit post has you install the Microsoft Edge flatpak. If you search using DDG or Google for "edge runs on steam deck", you will see that there are multiple news articles reporting on how Microsoft has worked with Valve to get Edge running on the Steam Deck. All of these use the flatpak mentioned in the post. I can absolutely see why the author of the flatpak would want at least some attribution instead of Microsoft announcing that they alone have gotten Edge running on the deck. Also, it is worth it to read the Wikipedia page on flatpak if you don't understand what flatpak is. It is a really important technology if you want to understand why the author is mad. [1] : https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/microsoft_edge_beta_the_browser_for_xbox_cloud/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/micro... [2] : https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/microsoft_edge_beta_the_browser_for_xbox_cloud/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftEdge/comments/th77w9/micro...
- jahewson 5y ago
  None of those sources back up your claim. They all say that Microsoft has worked with Valve to get Xbox Cloud Gaming working on the Steam Deck and that this work utilises Edge. They also imply that Edge Beta includes explicit support for the Steam Deck controls, but I was not able to verify that. If so, then that would presumably be what Valve and the MS Edge team were collaborating on.

ILMostro7 5y ago

Meh, not gonna lose sleep worrying about helping MS expand its footprint, or why they would want to minimize someone else's contribution.

jahewson 5y ago

I disagree with this post. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author of the help article was under the impression that the package was Microsoft’s. Just look at the metadata, which is used in the UI: <id>com.microsoft.Edge</id> <name>Microsoft Edge</name> <developer_name>Microsoft Corporation</developer_name> You can’t go round claiming to be Microsoft and then add a disclaimer in the notes field that you’re not actually Microsoft, which they do, after four paragraphs of other text: > NOTE: This wrapper is not verified by, affiliated with, or supported by Microsoft. I don’t think this is an adequate way to surface such an important piece of information, one which arguably contradicts the package metadata. Flathub needs to figure this out.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
charcircuit 5y ago
>You can’t go round claiming to be Microsoft and then add a disclaimer in the notes field that you’re not actually Microsoft The developer_name element is for the developer of the application that is being packaged. It is not the name of the maintainer of the flatpak. >The <developer_name/> tag is designed to represent the developers or project responsible for development of the project described in the metadata. https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html#tag-developer_name https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Met...
- jahewson 5y ago
  It may be designed that way but in practice it’s misleading, especially the way it appears in the UI. It looks like a designation of origin of the package. These are trademarks and can’t just be thrown around casually. Why is there not at least a packager or maintainer field?
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    >Why is there not at least a packager or maintainer field? On flathub the developer is the developer of the software being published and the publisher is the people who packaged it.

codetrotter 5y ago

Perhaps the article has been updated or perhaps I am missing something, but nothing in the linked article at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-in-microsoft-edge-with-steam-deck-43dd011b-0ce8-4810-8302-965be6d53296 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/xbox-cloud-gaming-... made me think specifically that Microsoft are in charge of the Flatpak packaging. Nor that they weren’t. But I also don’t see why this article would or should specifically mention who had happened to package the app. If anything, I would say that it would be more reasonable to instead ask Valve to highlight who is packaging stuff. Valve is responsible for the representation of things on SteamOS, not Microsoft. Asking for credit for packaging in a random support article seems.. strange?

kirbyfan64sos 5y ago
This comment went into some more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30740164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30740164 I mentioned this to the article author, and they edited the post to include the Reddit announcement.

moojacob 5y ago

If Microsoft officially starts publishing their apps to Flathub then we could have a watershed moment for Flatpak adoption. One central app store for Linux. Pushing Microsoft to take over maintaining the Flatpak for Edge is only a good thing? HN should be supporting the Edge authors. Flatpak is really special technology. Joy to package, excellent end user experience, and completely open.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> we could have a watershed moment for Flatpak adoption. One central app store for Linux. Because that model worked so well for iOS and Android?
- judge2020 5y ago
  Depends on how you define worked well. iOS and Android are immensely successful on providing value to users on the UX front (think of how many smartphone users would have a hard time downloading and installing eg. 7-zip).
- Spivak 5y ago
  You mean the packaging ecosystems that are so wildly successful they’re used by essentially 99.76% of smartphone users and 99.97% of tablet users? I think it worked out pretty well tbh. Would be an odd choice not to copy the model.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  It's not the same thing. Flatpak allows multiple remotes so anyone can publish their own packages.
fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
The point of picking a Linux distribution is buying into a package management scheme. If you want to pick the “flatpak” distro fine, but I’m sticking with apt or nix
- Spivak 5y ago

charcircuit 5y ago

I don't think crediting packagers is a common thing it general. I can't think of a time an article / company credited packagers when telling you to apt get something.

bruhhh 5y ago

Sunspark 5y ago
Curious to know what was created here. Are Flatpaks copyrightable?

encryptluks2 5y ago

I see no reason to help Microsoft with anything when it comes to Linux. Edge isn't even open source is it? I don't see how this helps anyone to provide a Flatpak of a proprietary binary that will go to great lengths to take hostile actions against the user.

pigbearpig 5y ago

This is pretty ridiculous and a manufactured scandal. I'm sure attempting to publicly shame a company into a job offer will turn out well. I don't even see the problem, a help article says to install a browser? If I blog about how to install software, I have to give attribution to whomever packaged it? This is just absurd.

aneutron 5y ago

They sure seem to have a LOT of "oversights" of this kind. AppGet comes to mind when I read this. Either it's a cultural issue, or that the management are sorry they got caught. I'm thinking this is more of the second option.