[palata]

> you want distro maintainers to compile and package every single pieces of software under the sun

No. I want people who will actually use the package to package the software they need, and distro maintainer to supervise that.

> Because it was packaged by people who know little about erlang

Yep, people who won't use Erlang shouldn't package Erlang. But on the other hand, developers who won't use Erlang on platform X shouldn't package Erlang on platform X.

The "we absolutely need flatpak because otherwise it fundamentally doesn't work" philosophy is, to me, very close to saying "we must consolidate everything under one single OS. Everybody should use the exact same thing otherwise it doesn't work". That's not what I want. I want to have freedom, and the cost of it is that I may have to package stuff from time to time.

If you don't want to contribute to your distro, choose a super popular distro where everything is already packaged (and used!). Or use macOS. Or use Windows. You don't get to complain about Alpine Linux not having a package you want: you chose Alpine, that was part of the deal.

[skydhash]

Alpine is a great litmus test for programs that unnecessarily depends on glibc and systemd. More often than not, it’s easy to take the arch build script, and create a package for alpine. When that fails, it’s usually for the above reason.

[troupo]

> I want people who will actually use the package to package the software they need, and distro maintainer to supervise that.

Erm... Your original comment said "you should not package for distros, distros should package for themselves. You just distribute your sources."

> Yep, people who won't use Erlang shouldn't package Erlang. But on the other hand, developers who won't use Erlang on platform X shouldn't package Erlang on platform X.

So... Who's gonna package it if you say that distros should package it?

> The "we absolutely need flatpak because otherwise it fundamentally doesn't work" philosophy is, to me, very close to saying "we must consolidate everything under one single OS.

Bullshit.

What you advocate for is "why bother with ease of use and convenience, everyone should learn how to compile and package everything from scratch"

> If you don't want to contribute to your distro

The user of a package doesn't necessarily know how to package something, and shouldn't need to.

[palata]

> Erm... Your original comment said "you should not package for distros, distros should package for themselves. You just distribute your sources."

Yes. I said "distros", not "the distro maintainers". The distro is the maintainers + the packagers, and packagers can be random contributors (I package stuff for my distro when needed, but I am not a distro maintainer).

> So... Who's gonna package it if you say that distros should package it?

People who will use Erlang on that particular distro. Under the supervision of the distro maintainers. There is typically some kind of hierarchy where there are the "community" packages that are just "untested" (sometimes they can get promoted to a more trusted level), and the "core" packages that are handled by the distro maintainers.

> What you advocate for is "why bother with ease of use and convenience, everyone should learn how to compile and package everything from scratch"

Not at all, but it seems like you don't know how it currently works in traditional distros, and you don't understand what I'm saying (probably I'm not being clear, that's on me).

What I advocate seems absolute common sense: "the package maintainer(s) should understand and use the package on the distro for which is is packaged".

The vast majority (probably almost the totality of) users of Ubuntu or Arch have never had a need to package anything, because everything is already there. Because those distros are very popular. Depending on your choice of distro, it may happen that a package hasn't been contributed or even that it doesn't compile (e.g. if you use musl). In that case, if you want it, you need to contribute it. But if you use musl, you implicitly accept this and are supposed to know what you are doing.

> The user of a package doesn't necessarily know how to package something, and shouldn't need to.

That's your opinion. I would say that a Gentoo user is expected to have some idea about compiling packages, otherwise they should not use Gentoo. Ubuntu is targetting people who don't want to know how it works, that's fine too. Diversity is good.

What I don't like, is Windows-minded people ("I shouldn't have to understand how my computer works") who come to Linux and push for everybody to become like them. "We should all use systemd and Flatpak, and pay one team of 50 people who know how that works, and the rest of us should just use it and not know about it" -> I disagree with that. Those who think that should just use Ubuntu/Windows/macOS and leave me alone. And for those who use Ubuntu, they should remember that they don't pay for it next time they say "it's shit because it doesn't do exactly what I want".

[troupo]

> and packagers can be random contributors

So who's going to maintain the packages? Who's going to test them against other packages? Against distro upgrades? Who's going to fix issues?

> Not at all, but it seems like you don't know how it currently works in traditional distros

I do. A small number of people are doing the thankless job of packaging, maintaining, fixing, testing a multitude of packages.

And their efforts are needlessly duplicated across several packaging systems.

> What I don't like, is Windows-minded people ("I shouldn't have to understand how my computer works") who come to Linux and push for everybody to become like them

What I don't like is people assuming ill intent behind "you know what would be great? If we didn't assume that every user has to package their own packages across 15 different incompatible packaging systems".

[palata]

> So who's going to maintain the packages? Who's going to test them against other packages? Against distro upgrades? Who's going to fix issues?

I feel like you're not reading what I'm writing. The community.

That's how open source works: if you use an open source project and it has a bug, you can fix it and open an MR. If the upstream project doesn't want your fix, you can fork. Nothing forces the upstream project to accept your contributions. When they do, they take the responsibility for them (to some extent, as in: it is now part of their codebase).

If your distribution doesn't have a package you want, you can make it for yourself, locally. You can contribute it to a community repo (most distros have that). Maybe at some point, the distro maintainers will decide to take over your package in a more official repo, maybe not. Even if you are not the official maintainer of a package, if you use it and see a problem, you can contribute a fix.

In the open source world, most people are freeriders. A (big) subset of those feel entitled and are simply jerks. And a minority of people are not freeriders and actually contribute. That's the deal.

> And their efforts are needlessly duplicated across several packaging systems.

No! No no no no! If they don't want to put efforts into that, they don't have to. They could use Ubuntu, or Windows, or macOS. If they contribute to, say, Alpine or Gentoo, that's because they want to. I am not on Gentoo in the hope that it will become Ubuntu, that would be weird. But you sound like you want to solve "my Gentoo problems" by making it look more like Ubuntu (in the idea). Don't use Gentoo if you don't want to, and leave me alone! Don't try to solve my problems, you're not even a Gentoo user.

[troupo]

> That's how open source works:

Funny how in reality it's not how open source works. Packages are en masse packaged and maintained by a very small number of maintainers doing a thankless job. Not by some "community" where "a person who uses the package" suddenly wakes up nad says "you know, I'm going to package this piece of software"

This is literally the reason for my exmaple with Erlang in my original comment.

> n the open source world, most people are freeriders.

I'm getting tired of your rants and tangents

> No! No no no no! If they don't want to put efforts into that, they don't have to. They could use Ubuntu

You're deliberately missing and/or ignoring the point.

Ho many package managers and package format are there? Packaging some code for each of them is wasted/duplicated effort because it's doing the same thing (packaging) for the same code (for example, Erlang) for literally the same operating system (Linux) just because someone has a very subjective view of "the one true correct way".

So now you have someone packaging, say, Erlang, for dpkg, flatpack, nix, pacman, rpm, snap and probably a few others because "people are not freeloaders" or "non-windows-minded people" or some other stream of consciousness.

> Don't use Gentoo if you don't want to, and leave me alone! Don't try to solve my problems, you're not even a Gentoo user.

I've said all I had to say. You deliberately chose to talk only to the voices in your head. Sorry, I'm not privy to those voices.

So, adieu.

[palata]

> Funny how in reality it's not how open source works.

Let me copy the full sentence, with the part that you conveniently truncated: "That's how open source works: if you use an open source project and it has a bug, you can fix it and open an MR. If the upstream project doesn't want your fix, you can fork. Nothing forces the upstream project to accept your contributions. When they do, they take the responsibility for them (to some extent, as in: it is now part of their codebase)."

Can you explain to me how this is wrong?

> I'm getting tired of your rants and tangents

How is that a rant? That's almost by design: I make my code open source so that people can benefit from it for free under some conditions. Take the billions of computers running Linux. Which proportion of those are run by people who actually contribute to Linux, do you think? As a good approximation, it's ~0%. Almost all users of Linux don't contribute to Linux. It's a fact, not a rant.

Nowhere did I say that people should contribute.

> Ho many package managers and package format are there?

Who cares? If I want to create a new package manager with a new package format, why would you forbid me from doing it? That's my whole point: people are free to do whatever they want. Are you saying that I must use Flatpak instead of my favourite package manager because you have decided that it was better for everybody?

Why do you stop at package managers? In your view, isn't having different OSes is wasted/duplicated effort? Should we all just use Windows because it's your favourite and you don't understand why other people may have other preferences?

> Sorry, I'm not privy to those voices.

My point is that whenever somebody says "it's stupid, we should all use X", my answer is always "If Y, Z, A, B, C, ... exist, it's because other people, for some reasons, don't want X. Because you like X doesn't mean that everybody should like X. I see how it would be convenient for you if everybody used exactly your favourite system, but the reality is that we can't all love exactly the same things. Hence there are alternatives. Diversity is good".

Diversity is good. I don't say that Flatpak should not exist. I just say that whoever wants me to use Flatpak is fundamentally missing something.