ThirdPartyPackages

Revision 6 as of 2005-11-01 17:56:44

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Summary

Some software cannot be incorporated into Ubuntu's comprehensive package repositories. We should explore options for providing Ubuntu users with convenient access to such software.

Rationale

Use cases

Scope

Design

We will create a new component, called (to be confirmed) "commercial". This is where we will store debs for software that is supported by somebody, but is non-free and possible non-redistributable.

Gnome-app-install is extended so that it contains information about this commercial applications as well. We will add these two checkboxes to the front page of the "Add Applications" tool (gnome app installer):

    [x] Commercial software
    [ ] Unsupported softwareThere will be a GUI option 

This will turn on the universe / multiverse / commercial components in the following fashion:

Unsupported OFF

Unsupported ON

Commercial ON

commercial

commercial, multiverse, universe

Commercial OFF

(main, restricted only)

universe

The commercial application should be turned off by default.

After turning on, AND UPDATING packages files, will see them in synaptic and gnome-app-installer. After the checkboxes are clicked, the user will get asked if he wants to update the package list.

We also provide a convenient way to install deb files directly in a save way. The user should be able to see what the debs contains (description, files) and the dependencies needs to be analyzed and it must be checked if they can be installed.

The comcerial applications will contain a additional Field "x-gai-commcercial" (name not final yet) in the pseudo-desktop file that is used to identify commercial software and that contains license information and a URL to the license. For software that requires a key to activate and that is not usable without a big warning needs to be displayed to make sure that the user does not downloads photoshop to discover that he won't be able to run it.

Open issues

=== Dealing with redistributability ====

  • some commercial software is dowloadable and redistributable
  • some cannot be redistributed
    • XXX see Kinnison re pools and components and put them into a non mirrored pool maybe?
    • XXX can we put full URL's in the Packages file? see Elmo?

Methods of activation of the software

  • Shareware (no activation, voluntary contribution)
  • Activation post install:
    • User goes to ISV web site, gets key, activates in product
    • FUTURE: Key management is done directly by gnome-app-install
    • FUTURE: Ability to add "lockable"repo's, where the whole repo
      • is enabled after some transaction

We shouldn't support handing out license keys and supporting paying initially but this is a future goal.

misc

  • should there be a commercial-security pocket? how does e.g. oracle handles security update right now? or service packs?
  • can these packages be published to a different pool, to prevent
    • accidental mirroring?
  • What will be the interface for server-oriented apps, like Oracle
    • and DB2?
  • do we want to manage a repository containing 3rd party s/w ? or just point to the
    • repository supported by the 3rd party ?
  • how do the vendors support their updates ( security etc. )

Adding software to the repo

  • the commercial component needs to be able to be updated post-release
    • once software is certified for that release (so the desktop files that describe the available stuff in gnome-app-install needs to be updated in some way)

Implementation

To install debs in a save way there are two options. One is to add support for it to libapt itself. There is a baz branch for this in "apt--local-install--0". The current patch is rather intrusive and the apt maintainer does not particularly like it. The other alternative is to provide a application (that can be part of the apt package) that will analyze the deb and it's dependencies. If they can be satisfied it will be installed, otherwise it won't.

Code

Some prototype work is beeing done to install deb files directly in the bzr archive at http://people.ubuntu.com/~mvo/bzr/gdebi--main

There are also test-packages available at:

deb http://people.ubuntu.com/~mvo/gdebi/ /

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion