Linked by Jordan Spencer Cunningham on Mon 14th Jun 2010 23:58 UTC

Permalink for comment 430054
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Member since:
2007-02-17
WTF????
Opposite situation. It is better for the outside developer to avail themselves of the resources of the distribution repository. Unlike Apple, this not a case of "your app can't be in our repository" ... where is there any profit in that?
The "Distro Gods" are not in the business of trying to limit you. You can get, say, VLC, KDE, MPlayer, Firefox and OpenOffice on Debian, Ubuntu, SuSe, Mandriva and RedHat. It is the same code, it is not re-written dozens of times over by different "Distro Gods". Sheesh!
There are over 25,000 open source packages in Debian/Ubuntu repositories. This is hardly a case of anyone "playing God" and trying to somehow short-change you.
But, anyway, if your application is too obscure for a distribution to accept it (because after all they would have to devote resources to it if they did accept it) ... then you can still sign your packages and host them in a format suitable for delivery via end users package managers anyway. The only weakness here is that end users must add a URL to your distribution server in their software sources list, and they must obtain your public key securely from somewhere. There are key servers for that latter purpose.
For example, if you want a version of Firefox-3.7 that includes WebM, right now, today, then here you go:
https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa
Open a terminal and enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-3.7
This will install a GPG signed version of Mozilla 3.7 nightly build on your Ubuntu system, using the apt package manager, independent of Ubuntu's repositories. The end user does not have to know anything about GPG. The first command, add-apt-repository, gets a key for the ppa from a trusted keyserver.
There are over 18,000 projects on launchpad.net.
https://launchpad.net/
Edited 2010-06-15 05:45 UTC