alt Hacker NewsAs I understand it, snap the package format is not proprietary. Its as open source as say flatpak. What is proprietary is Canonical official snap store, and they patch their version of snap to only use that store. It'd be the same as flatpak being tied to only flathub.
Of course that goes against the spirit of FOSS, but there's a bit more nuance there than simply saying "snaps are proprietary".
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I've tried making snap packages, but I discovered they're very tightly tied to Ubuntu's base packages. They're not portable at all. In essence they're effectively just a secondary Ubuntu-specific package format for user-level applications.
For example, with flatpak you select a base runtime for your package that contains mostly system-agnostic libraries. With snap, you specify an Ubuntu version as a base runtime and additional dependencies that are Ubuntu packages.
Did they release the server components for hosting your own snap repositories, yet?
I can't seem to find it. Any pointers would be helpful, so at least I can know the latest state of this thing.
> If I try to manipulate what you are talking about, I can attempt to frame something as open source which isn't.
I didn't say "the snap format".
The server isn't, and the client is hostile to using an alternative server. Snaps are a solution, and picking out one piece is deceptive.
Snaps don't just suck from an ideological but also practical perspective, as described for Thunderbird. Firefox on Ubuntu has also serious permission issues with webcam support OOTB even experts are struggling with (involving AppArmor, pipewire, snap, and FF device config). and has become unusable for things like browser-only MS Teams on mainstream notebooks.
Containers, popular as they may be on servers, can only add breakage and overhead to desktops, especially for an established and already much better organized system like Debian's apt. There just haven't been any new desktop apps for way over a decade that would warrant yet another level of indirection.