ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Zisu Andrei <matzipan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey guys,

I just spent an hour reading 55 emails in this thread. The last reply was 4
days ago, so I can see the discussion dying out, but I can't see any
conclusions building up.

The service-only approach, while very easy to manage as an OS, sounds
extremely limited. And countless arguments can be found against it.

The policy approach, while it sounds empowering to the developers, it will
end up being abused.

There would be the permission approach, where the app would ask the user
directly "can I run in the background?", but, in the lack of context, the
user will just get confused.

There would be the "show background apps currently running in the
background so I can make an informed decision about what I want running",
but the average Joe (e.g. my mum) would get easily confused by that.

Just throwing a wild idea: what about collecting battery usage data from
users for each app and then in the store display a warning sign "This app
is a resource hog!"?

Zisu Andrei


On 28 October 2013 06:22, Alberto Mardegan
<alberto.mardegan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> On 10/27/2013 08:08 PM, Thomas Voß wrote:
> >> I think we are misunderstanding; I'm not saying that the user should be
> >> asked (at install time or at run time) for granting a permission. There
> >> would be a policy groups "background_gps", "background_music" which the
> >> app developer can declare in its manifest file. Then, if the application
> >> is defocused while it's using the GPS or playing music, it wouldn't be
> >> stopped. If it's not using the GPS or playing music, it will be stopped.
> >> It seems much simpler to me, and I don't see what could go wrong here.
> >
> > What prevents every app from just doing that? One example: When iOS
> > had the policy of an app playing music not being suspended, a lot of
> > applications just looped a whitenoise sound file to not be suspended.
>
> OK, this looks like a very strong point not to allow music applications
> to be run in the background, but provide them with a background service.
> Unless there is a non-costly way of detecting the case where an
> application has been playing an almost silent sound for the last minute.
>
> However, I still think that we shouldn't apply the same rule for the
> GPS. Here if one application declares that it' using it just for the
> sake of keeping running in the background, the user has a visible
> indicator for it, and can deactivate the GPS. Also writing a system
> background service for the GPS is much more difficult than writing a
> background service for playing sounds (for the GPS, we have much more
> complex logic).
>
> Ciao,
>   Alberto
>
>
> --
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone
> Post to     : ubuntu-phone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>