ubuntu-appstore-developers team mailing list archive

[Jamie Strandboge <jamie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/17/2013 06:30 AM, Marc Deslauriers wrote:
> On 13-10-17 03:27 AM, Michael Nelson wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 11:54 PM, Martin Albisetti
>> <martin.albisetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 6:38 PM, Marc Deslauriers
>>> <marc.deslauriers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> We care what it looks like, we just aren't going to enforce it until it becomes
>>>> a problem.
>>>>
>>>> Isn't it already hidden?
>>>
>>> Yes to the user, no to the developer. Which is why it feels odd making
>>> the developer decide about something that isn't really user visible.
>>>
>>
>> +1 for removing the unnecessary decision for the moment. Given that we
>> haven't (yet) implemented an automated verification of the domains,
>> let's not let devs choose (and communicate) them unnecessarily.
>> Automatically assigning com.ubuntu.developer domains would seem to
>> sanest option and create the least work right now (as it avoids the
>> possibility of reaching a problem that we need to clean-up and start
>> enforcing).
> 
> But now you get back to the issue of having name collisions, which allowing the
> developer to pick their own namespace, as on android, solves.
> 
> If you tie the application namespace to the developer username, you then can't
> have the possibility of an application moving between developers without the
> user losing all their settings.
> 
> For example, forcing com.ubuntu.developer.joeemployee.facebookapp instead of
> allowing com.facebook.facebookapp means that when Joe Employee is no longer a
> Facebook employee, the app can't be migrated to a new account without losing
> user data.
>
This is a different problem and one that I think is either already or is about
to be solved. It doesn't have to be tied to an individual username and teams are
able to upload to a namespace. Eg, all the webapps are setup for this now:
   com.ubuntu.developer.webapps.webapp-amazon_webapp-amazon_1.0.6
   com.ubuntu.developer.webapps.webapp-ebay_webapp-ebay_1.0.8
   com.ubuntu.developer.webapps.webapp-facebook_webapp-facebook_1.0.5
   com.ubuntu.developer.webapps.webapp-gmail_webapp-gmail_1.0.7
   com.ubuntu.developer.webapps.webapp-twitter_webapp-twitter_1.0.5
   com.ubuntu.developer.webapps.webapp-ubuntuone_webapp-ubuntuone_1.0.4

> I don't see why this is a problem for us, but isn't for other platforms.
> 
I can't say either way if it is a problem on other platforms-- they've also been
around a lot longer and perhaps have internal/manual policies and procedures
that have developed over time to deal with this sort of thing (I don't know). I
know that people and companies will be bent out of shape if they encounter
namespace collisions in the appstore, because that is human nature.

Beyond that, I can think of other interesting situations. Suppose a carrier
wants to preinstall something on Ubuntu Touch. Eg, com.carrier.billing-app. This
is installed in /usr/share/click/preinstalled and everything is fine-- until
some decides to upload a trojaned app to the app store that is also
com.carrier.billing-app. Users get the 'upgrade' installed (into /opt) and are
no longer using the preinstalled app. Sure, we can have policies around how to
handle this, etc, etc, but wouldn't it be easier to just avoid scenarios like
this altogether (at the very least while we are bootstrapping the system)?

-- 
Jamie Strandboge                 http://www.ubuntu.com/

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