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Description
It seems the commercial repo falls in and out of favour - back in Dapper days it was launched with quite a bit of fanfare with quite a lot of third party/commercial apps. However these quickly became out of date with security fixes (ie Opera) and often broken by kernel updates (ie VMWare) and people resorted back to getting the packages from the third parties themselves.
From memory it took a few months for the repo to reappear in Edgy but it mainly remained empty. Lately a press release went out about offering Parallels Workstation from the repo, with the option to purchase the full product from the Canonical store. Upon trying this recently it seems this package is already broken by recent updates - I've seen a few threads on the forums about it and also a bug is still unconfirmed in Launchpad.
It seems if Ubuntu is wanting to gain more commercial clout it would be good to maintain/monitor this repo more frequently?
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Comments
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erlehmann wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 05:53
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Proprietary apps should not be encouraged [-1].
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derick.eisenhardt wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 05:55
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I would love to be able to buy commercial/proprietary apps (especially games) via Synaptic/1-click/something... Sorta like Steam/XboxLive * Apt. This way more commercial/proprietary developers would have a simple/easy way to sell their software to Ubuntu users, and the users would be guaranteed (to some extent) that the software is reliable, fully compatible and secure. Perhaps I should make a separate entry for this...?
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THAiSi wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 10:45
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I would also love to see the repositories turn into something that steam is. Allow commercial software. Pay directly online and download the application for linux. Synaptic keeps it up-to-date, and if I remove the server side remembers (through some server login) what software I bought so I can download it again later.
Linux needs good commercial software support, so that developing companies can easily distribute their software for linux. This would really help the adaptation of software. And the more developers developing for the linux platform, the more of them will also participate in the open-source projects.
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Vadim P. wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 14:14
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I would love to be able to access more applications, when the free software ones simply aren't up to my needs.
I of course support it and all, and always look for alternatives, but when I need _this_ function _right now_, and a non-free app has it, sorry - I'm not going to be sacrificing myself.
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Wouter.de.Groot wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 14:21
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How often is one in a truly dire need for app X and NEEDS to pay cash for it, right then and there? Not very often. The argument that we should have a repo just for that is unsound. Ubuntu should encourage freedom. Why they offer Parallels is beyond me, VirtualBox works quite well, and seems to outperform it, too.
This does not seem like a very wonderful idea. Not one to deserve preference, anyway. Let's focus on other things than trying to re-shackle ourselves first.
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ebrahim wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 15:04
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-1 for the same reason as the first comment!
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probono wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 16:45
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Proprietary apps should be encouraged!
(You're always free not to use them.)
Harassment against proprietary apps should be stopped.
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ethana2 wrote on the 2 Mar 08 at 08:25
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probono ++
Google.
....Google.
There is such a thing as commercial apps in good faith.
Get google apps in repos. Do it as soon as possible. We need sketchup!
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yman wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 05:44
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For some strange reason my idea was marked as a duplicate, even thought it differs both in goals and execution:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1159/
Someone please fix this.
Note: my idea is specifically meant to expand on the apt:// protocol to support 3rd party repositories like get-deb, as well as create a decentralized market of 3rd party commercial apps. Therefor, it differs greatly from this idea which is basically asking for more of the same.
My idea is to allow installation of 3rd party apps that update from their respective 3rd party repositories, without adding the entire repository to sources.list. If that is impractical, than it should offer you the option to install it, by simply clicking "OK" and entering your password or some such thing.
There would also be a way to pay online in a standard form, using a single online account for ease of use. The software would be tied to the account, so you could use it on multiple computers, download it multiple times, etc, and not need to mess with product keys.
The important thing is that anyone can set up an online store without going through Canonical or having any ties with it what so ever. Also, the same mechanism could be used for other purposes than buying software packages.
Each time you want to get an update for commercial software, you'd have to provide your user name and password.
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jeanpaul145 wrote on the 10 Mar 08 at 01:24
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I will never use a proprietary app if I don't have to (and with me probably the majority of current Linux users).
That said, it *would* be handy, for instance, if software like maple was available from the repo's (maple's installer on x86 is a mess, I don't even wanna get into x86_64).
What van I say? sometimes I simply need it for a unversity project :p
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ranser wrote on the 10 Mar 08 at 15:44
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The idea of proprietary and commercial app undermines the very foundation of FREE SOFTWARE concept. Linux was and is free software and so are applications. Should some companies implement commercial software so will do others and before long we'll have another windows-like environment. It would mean to turn some good, bright ideas and concepts into some murky software business environment. It's about the idea !
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maybeway36 wrote on the 10 Mar 08 at 20:45
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Not letting users use propietary software, even if they want to, goes against the definition of Free.
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probono wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 03:16
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Yes, Google Earth and Picasa and Skype and RealPlayer and such. Some people want them. Making it hard to install them won't exactly push the respective companies to make them Open Source.
So why can't they just be in enabled-by-default repos?
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sf_007 wrote on the 3 Apr 08 at 22:56
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I think this is a good idea, I don't see the problem in having a different repository, disabled by default, with good proprietary/commercial programs, it would be good for everyone... the users, the developers, and even for the adoption of Linux itself...
Doing that would be giving more freedom of choice to users, freedom to use more programs, freedom to do more things, without taking not even a bit of the freedom of the ones that don't want it or don't need it...
Linux shouldn't be like "Proprietary Software: against it at all costs!" I think it sould be more like "Free Software: the more, the better..."
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arzajac wrote on the 14 Apr 08 at 18:52
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The question is whether this repo should be better supported.
We are talking about a repo for third-party apps. How can that be properly supported? The only people that can properly support proprietary software are the people who have the code!
If upstream is negligent, what can be done?
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Bug #194798
