GitHub Should Start an App Store
ankshilp.com
ankshilp.com
Release integration is trivial for anyone. It's the easiest and most irrelevant part of the app stores.
> Unlike Google they actually listen to their users. They were awesome during youtube-dl debacle.
And controversial on others, like shutting down Popcorn Time's repository. As any other, they'll listen if there's enough outcry.
> Backed by Microsoft. Microsoft has been playing good by the developers for years now. I trust them more than Apple and Google.
This is situational and opportunistic. It can change any day. In fact, managing an important app store is exactly one way to re-(un)-balance this relationship.
> They could finally give the desktop the app store it deserves
Microsoft won't have GitHub compete with the Microsoft Store and its newer efforts like winget. It would unermine their unifying vision that has been in the works for years for no benefit.
> This is a minor but users will be able to raise issues with developers directly instead writing comments over app pages which I think you would agree completely suck.
Sure, lets pipe user feedback directly into GitHub issues. Good luck with that if you have a hundred issues a day.
I don't think there's a single angle that would paint this as a good idea. Phone manufacturers like Samsung are in a much much better position to try. And indeed they have been trying an failing.
Would they? Microsoft is still serving ICE, despite all the "grilling".
As soon as someone starts complaining about "woke" and "SJWs" and "cancel culture" and so on, I know I can just switch off and disengage, as anything they have to say on the topic will be some reactionary bullshit they're parroting at me.
Of course, there might be reasons form Microsoft to create an alternative to the App Stores say for a gaming marketplace etc. But specifically for GitHub I cannot see why they would be interested in the overhead.
They charge said developers a few dollars a month per seat. GitHub could somehow instead be taking a 0%-20% cut topline revenue from some of the apps they host.
Lots of work to make that happen the upside might make it worth while.
I dont know what a normal person would be doing on github.
If GitHub could somehow solve the demand side (Phone users) they'd be sorted.
I’m not saying it’s the best thing for GitHub to do, but...
Let’s say 15% of Android top 1000 apps are sitting in private repos on GitHub. With their build tools GitHub make it possible to automatically push builds to this imaginary store, they offer devs 50% discount on whatever cut google take if on the play store.
That light at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming train. Not freedom.
Apple - Blocked
Android - Pointless without a drop in replacement for Google Services.
Windows- This is possible, but Windows doesn't really have a distribution problem. There's no real need here.
Linux - Again possible, but no real need
The specific advantage is that it makes switching providers really hard. You develop in Atom, store the code in GitHub, use GitHub Actions for CI/CD (if that's viable, I'm not super familiar with the product), use GitHub to manage the released artifacts, and publish them to GitHub's app store.
That makes it really appealing to buy because you don't have to talk to 7 different vendors and duct tape their solutions together with Python scripts. You talk to 1 vendor, who gives you all the pieces, and the pieces are already able to communicate natively.
It makes it really appealing to sell because once you buy in, it's really hard to get back out. Imagine trying to replace all of those components, and the developer time you lose as people get used to the new systems and how they all work together. Bonus points if you can only publish to the GitHub app store from GitHub installations. GitLab can do a lot of those things, but they don't have an app store.
As others pointed out though, it would compete with Microsoft's existing app store. I would not be terribly surprised to see some kind of integration between GitHub and MS's app store, or Azure and their app store though.
I don't think people understand what an average (and below average) cell phone user is like. Just read some of the App store reviews (fraction of the people that use apps actually write reviews).
This pipe-dreaming would come crashing down from being a minor issue to major, the wrath of an average user is insane.
It would be business as usual under a different Big Tech name.
Given the garbage-grade issues I have often seen from professional engineers, this sounds like a complete nightmare.
I agree. Sorting huge, multinational, publicly traded companies in friends and enemies list is so obviously bogus and immature that it baffles me that this is so prevalent.
Microsoft is not your enemy. It's not your friend (unless you're one of the shareholders). It's profit driven and amoral. They'll always line up with whatever they believe will maximize profits because that their entire reason for existing.
Apparently Microsoft decided that being more FLOSS friendly (after decades of trying to annihilate these projects, lest we forget) because they decided that it would favor them in the long run.
If they ever decide that they stand to make more profit by throwing the whole github ethos under the bus they will. A few people will make strongly worded blog posts that will reach the top of HN. A few employees might even quit and loudly slap the door on the way out. Then probably nothing will happen.
During that time Google was very friendly to FLOSS, and open protocols (remember when GChat was just a XMPP client)
Today MS and Google seems to have flipped, Google now is fully embracing Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, where MS seems to be attempting to wind that back though with mixed success
https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode/issues/1863#issuecomme...
Lately, I love what they've been doing. Even github -- there have been disappointments, for sure, but nothing like the egregious misbehavior in the bad old days. But given their history; given Google's "do no evil" bait&switch... I don't want to hand them more power.
It'd be cool if an interested third party could build out an app store that automatically sources from github (and its competitors), though.
That’s called a package repository and there are hundreds (thousands?) of them.
An “App Store” is a vertically integrated package repo.
Element is actually in the F-droid store but the version is outdated.
From what I could see it was also difficult to switch the office suite. My OEM installed trial versions of word, excel, etc. which were set to be opened by default on all related file extensions. Switching to libreoffice was a PITA, I couldnt find a simple, one-click way to change all these. I had to go over them one-by-one.. (.doc, .docx, .dochtml, .docxhtml, .xls, .xlsx, .xlshtml, .xslsxhtml,....)
Back when I used Gmail, I'd open my email and get not one, but TWO separate things, one a popup box, and one a top bar, telling me I should switch to Chrome, and dismissing it never stuck. It'd come back in a week or so. Even once Edge started running on Chrome code, Google stepped up writing new tricks to claim that Edge was "less secure" because it didn't direct telemetry straight to Google servers.
Google's underhanded push with Chrome has hurt everyone, and unfortunately, Microsoft probably can't "target just Chrome" in retaliating against such messaging, so Firefox gets hit too.
The only way to actually make a local account is to either (a) refuse to connect to WiFi until after an account is made or (b) disconnect the router while it is trying to talk to Microsoft. Option (a) is inaccessible by the time you realize that there is a problem, and option (b) is ridiculous and needs to be found on third-party suggestions. All so that Microsoft can pull in another email address.
Windows 10 installation has become a maze which only the really savvy can escape with their privacy somewhat in tact.
I never had this bullshit on PRO versions, but I'm connected through cable tho.
There are perhaps better anecdotes for reasons to dislike windows...
Personally, I'm still annoyed that removed the File Types settings in Windows 7(?), though some of them have made their way back with the new settings.
Install a Package Manager like Chocolety [1], AppGet [2] or the new "Official" one WinGet
>>I couldnt find a simple, one-click way to change all these. I had to go over them one-by-one.. (.doc, .docx, .dochtml, .docxhtml, .xls, .xlsx, .xlshtml, .xslsxhtml,....)
Yea MS has tried to bork this, but in the "Default Apps" settings page of the new "Settings" Application, there is a link called "Set Defaults by App" that makes it MUCH easier than what you did which was "Choose Default Apps by File Type"
Do you really believe Microsoft is changing their tactics because they want to?
They needed to change.
Their goal which has always been Platform, around 12 years ago they realized it had to be open open towards everything else than Windows only. Otherwise they would be seriously under pressure.
Why do you think Azure is so popular with other platforms too, other than ms tech?
Microsoft is really really good at setting and reaching goals. They excel at it. And believe you me, that their goal is not to approve and support open source because they shifted their mindset towards it - it's because they had to - and they will make money doing it.
These statements about companies, being kind towards this or that, has to be read carefully. They are savages in the end and will do pretty much anything to win.
I worked at MS for many years. Not any longer.
People are not rational actors, and the myth that we are is incredibly harmful.
- Interests of the shareholders and other stakeholders, who most likely cannot agree on most of their goals, but they will agree on "money = good";
- Competitors who wait for the company to make a mistake they can exploit to get ahead, or possibly kill the company
Combined, these forces all but ensure the company has no choice but to be a amoral profit maximizer, or die.
A different analogy, that doubles down on "corporation is essentially an AI" view, but may make it easier to explain the main point: if you apply Maslow's pyramid to companies, most of them do not have their Physiological and Safety levels met. They operate in survival mode. Rarely, a company "feels" secure enough to ponder long-term visions or some ideals that aren't directly survival-related.
Companies are not perfect optimizers. Arguably not even that strong. If someone in Purchasing is willing to reward their buddy instead of picking the best vendor for the job, well, that happens. It's noise. Doesn't change the overall behavior of the company. And it only happens within limits - do it too much, and the person in Purchasing will find themselves fired, maybe even charged with a crime. If they're too good, maybe they can kill their own company - much like a sickness can kill a human. Other companies will then be more vigilant.
Also worth noting that companies strive to improve their process and develop various means of ensuring and enforcing accountability - this, in essence, is trying to reduce the "noise" of individual humans within the larger AI of the company.
Microsoft and Google being recent examples of companies shifting their moral compass fairly quickly.
If that's true, then why do brands exist?
For most companies, the best way to drive profit is to build a long term relationship of trust with their customers and suppliers.
Edit: this doesn't mean I'm ready to join the Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook/Amazon fan club, but I can see that some companies regularly behave better than others, and I'm happy to act on that reputation. Take Oracle, for example.
When Github restored youtube-dl, they increased user trust while undermining media industry trust. When they pulled popcorntime, they did the reverse.
In each case, they were presumably acting rationally to preserve their relationships as best as they could. But whether or not that benefits you as an individual is more or less a toss of a coin.
This is a bogus line of thinking. For example, Apple have a very strong stance on privacy compared to FB and Google.
Does this mean they are more moral or trustworthy when it comes to privacy, or that you should trust them to remain focussed on privacy in the future?
Not at all! Their focus on privacy is a smart business model that they use to differentiate themselves from the competition. As soon as it stops being a smart model, or a better model presents itself, under the bus their focus on privacy will go. Apple being focussed on privacy right now should not be taken as them having a good reputation. They do not care about your privacy. They care about you buying their products. The same applies to all apparent "good" or "moral" behavior of any large company. It's not genuine morality, they don't care about the benefits to you or society at large. They just want you to generate money for them.
By all means, choose products from a company whose presented morality currently aligns with yours. But don't believe that morality is genuine, and don't get hooked on that company. Instead use them, just as they are using you, for as long as it benefits you, then dump them in a second when they inevitably change... Just as they would do to you.
Taking my Oracle example, I'm definitely never going to recommend my company adopts Oracle. Given their historical behaviour, it's just too much risk!
This position that all companies are equally amoral seems 1. blind to reality and 2. to be throwing away useful information.
The likely actions of a company are embedded in their culture, their structure, the people who choose to work there, and the personalities of their leadership. That can all change, but you have the ability to observe that change and punish companies which violate your trust.
That's both unfair, and quite frankly lets companies like Boeing off the hook. Executives get paid egregious amounts of money to set the direction of companies. Yes, some do focus solely on profit and it's generally obvious when they do. Some focus on making customers happy at nearly all costs. And there is everything in between. Of course management at all those companies believe their approach will make the company money, but plenty aren't solely focused on maximizing profits, I'd argue MS included.
I'm very sceptical that such a company exists (at least of any size beyond a small restaurant or similar). Can you give an example?
Samsung is bothering me. I have an S8 and they want to replace all the standard Google apps - including the basic text messageing one - with Samsung equivalents.
It's not clear why and I haven't gone looking. It feels like they're just trying to displace Google and be another company reading my messages and monitoring my activity. I figure I don't need another one of those in my life. If their intent is to help me by offering privacy respecting alternatives they have not done so. I'm also completely unaware of any app-store Samsung may have beyond a place for them to push their versions of these apps.
Am I wrong? Should I be looking closer at what Samsung has to offer?
But things like Samsung health send data home too unfortunately.
They are stepping back from cloud services a bit now and letting Microsoft step in, also not privacy driven but more financial I think.
Dog bites man is not news, and neither are most of the Samsung software travesties ranging from software supply chain debacles to TV spying to data breaches.
Nobody even cares in the tech community because no one expects anything of them.
I think Google is doing a good job with their Pixel phones indeed in terms of security, though they need longer support IMO. Samsung seems to just call everything 'knox' but not really specify what exactly they're doing. So from a security point of view I agree.
What? It can get way worse than Google. For all the privacy invasive things that Google does it’s one of the least bad. Unlike most companies that collect data it doesn’t directly sell user data, and it has a good history of avoiding security vulnerabilities that leak data.
I suppose the Chinese state and the apps they control like WeChat is worse in terms of what they do with the data (this social credit score etc). You're right. I was mainly thinking about the collection itself, not what is done with it.
What I mind mainly about Google is that they use it as payment for their services but don't provide any option to opt out and just pay with money. Though I suppose even if they did that at this stage, I wouldn't trust them.
Well, what about Huawei who want to send your data to China?
I wish I could do this. I have 32 GB space on my phone. Half of it is wasted on pre-installed junk I cannot delete because "it came with the phone". This involves games, or something like "Booking.com", and so forth.
Samsung is vastly worse. Consider off the bat that South Korea has wildly different (read ‘permissive and lax’) laws about police and government access to stored data.
There has never been any indication that Microsoft would unilaterally shut down Windows software. If fact they are uniquely open in terms of modern proprietary OS's.
Yes, so far they've ended up backpedaling every time they've tried to enforce the store, but it's pretty clear what their intentions are.
And the way they run a store is consistently horrible that it feels impossible to make worse. Full of horror stories, bans and rejections, sometimes even random pick deletions since Xbox Live Indie Games days, to at least as recent as just few quarters ago.
There are reasons why people choose iOS, Android, .msi file download from GitHub and so on over Microsoft Store.
There's a more fundamental issue: GitHub issues are for developers to report bugs and file feature-requests, they aren't intended for user support, even if that's sometimes how they're used.
Go on...
This honestly sounds like it could be a feature with the right automation. Devs are often separated from customers by multiple layers of "flappers" who's sole job is to triage, organize, and perform manual resolution of customer issues.
If your app is large enough to receive hundreds of issues a day, then it's likely there are entire teams of "flappers". What if that could be entirely automated such that customer complaints were grouped by pain point, and automatically ranked based on how many customers are affected and how severely they are affected?
This seems like an oddly practical problem to solve in 2021.
Average user is less than poorly educated about technology. Their level of competence when raising a bug is simply pathetic, a lot of times. I manage an email server for a family, they write to me "email doesn't work", I check issue and respond "domain should be gmail.com not gmail,com" (notice the comma).
This reminded me how sqlite team was getting emails or calls at night, from some random people because another software was crashing. User went to "about/legal" and found license of SQLite, so obviously they decided to contact SQLite and complain on bad software. https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d/src/os.h#L52-...
Now imagine facebook api breaks backwards compatibility, so you get 1000 of new issues in a day with title "broken", "doesn't work", "shit is crahing so gave 1* fix it now I might review it later".
Perhaps they could integrate github and winget/snap (for the linux side).
Like, here your Github release page, just one extra click and you can automatically publish to winget (for Windows) and to snap (for Linux).
What's the controversy? Popcorn Time IS illegal. Butter-desktop however is not, and is still active on GitHub.
Building app stores is hard. Moderating app stores is hard. Both are significantly different from running GitHub.
While I appreciate the author's intent here, this just doesn't feel like it was deeply thought out.
This could be a nice come back into the mobile sphere they lost out on. As a developer, I completely agree that Microsoft earned my trust over the years.
The pendulum has shifted, and it's swinging towards PWA.
Per Microsoft, Outlook is now a progressive web app.
App stores are dying - they're just going to take a bit to timeout.
Didn't Firefox recently announce they're discontinuing PWA features?
PWA is a set of modern web standards. "Supporting PWA" can mean many things but "Removing unfinished SSB" doesn't mean "Removing PWA".
It has for some things, and for others native is king. Native just delivers experiences that PWA can’t (yet).
To take a simple example - let’s consider a ‘timer app’. On iPhone I ask Siri to set me a timer for 5 minutes, it sets the timer and I walk away from my phone. 15 minutes the timer pings on my watch where I can accept it. There are multiple steps in this user story that a PWA currently struggles with, including:
* (Reliable) backgrounding
* Siri integration
* Notifications
* Apple Watch support
Also, in this context, a TWA isn’t useful as the post is about avoiding an App Store / central control using PWA.
I disagree. I think providing that a way to distribute applications through GitHub, with builds certified as coming from the original authors, would be beneficial.
This has been tried in the past - Freshmeat, SourceForge, but that was a different era and also none of them tried to upgrade and modernize. So now there seems to be a niche opening for this in 2021.
Make an App Store platform everyone would love to be on. Get developers on board by giving them first 2 years for free, then a moderate membership fee. Take a reasonable cut from IAP's against providing customer support for the payments/chargebacks/fraud. Just make it awesome, reliable and fair.
Essentially they are arguing for Github (Microsoft) to host and have an App Store on their platform and control it because they listen to their users, which is quite frankly a very poor reason.
Cydia and F-Droid packages are already 'App Stores' which you can install apps via pressing 'Add to Cydia' or 'Add to F-Droid' buttons on the publisher's website. You're free to add whatever app and install whatever app you want without Apple / Google stopping you, and its decentralised.
The same has been said for desktop apps (Native or Electron), which have been hosted on the publisher's websites for years, without the need of an App Store. I can imagine an 'App Store' equivalent for Desktop which works like Cydia and F-Droid which allows users to discover and install an app with a simple deep-link into the App Store. Linux has this already, equivalents for Windows and macOS are possible but it should not come from GitHub.
The above approaches are already there and are completely decentralised. Unlike the author who is going for another centralised App Store in the hands of GitHub / Microsoft (again).
Honestly, I've yet to find an argument for the existence of an app store that holds water. Let people install what they want. Provide reasonable paths to update and upgrade and cut out the middle layer.
The layer of control that Google and Apple exert over people is anti-competitive. But the answer isn't competing app stores. I don't need someone to tell me what I can or can't install on the operating system on my device.
if your problem is the fact that apple restricts people's ability to run software that they haven't explicitly allowed, then I agree, that is a problem. that isn't a problem on google as you can install any apk you want.
That's not to say Apt/Portage are by any means perfect; the nature of how they are configured is definitely not going to be friendly to your typical Windows user. But I think it is possible to wrap that in a UI that adequately expresses "okay, you're adding the ability to install software from this vendor, and [the package manager] will help keep it patched & up-to-date."
I think we also need to combine that with better security models, so that desktop software isn't necessarily granted access to everything by default.
But UI design trends have spent the last decade "simplifying" UIs down so much that they fail to solve the problem at hand.
I'm not only concerned about that, though. The standard 30% cut of revenue flowing through the app if it was downloaded from the app store is also an issue.
In general, App Stores create a 'marketplace' where one doesn't need to exist. That it's the default method of getting software isn't really a benefit because it makes self-distribution harder (or impossible - which is really the anticompetitive issue here).
This isn't true. Other app stores cannot compete with the Play Store on feature parity due to limitations Google put in Android. For example, F-Droid cannot implement background installation of apps, batch installations, or automatic upgrading without first having root.
I think that attitude was fine pre-internet, but these days we are all sharing a network and there's an analogy that can be drawn with public health policies. App stores are one small part of the strategy to help reduce the number of machines that end up as part of a bot net or other similar uses.
Why is that? Why does fear always win? Your argument is based on fear. Why do we favor fear over rationality?
You would choose a dictatorship over a democracy if it meant that you felt safe. This where that line of thinking leads.
You'd rather be safe than free.
Do you look at drunk driving laws as an irrational concession to fear?
The slope isn't nearly as slippery as you seem to think it is.
We got by just fine in the 80s and 90s without App stores. So much innovation came out of that world which established the dominant players who are in control now.
And you don't even get security with App stores. As we already know with all the malware found in Google Play apps.
App stores are simply keeping the big guys big and small guys small with few exceptions here and there.
It's just another walled garden that keeps the little guy out and keeps players like Google and Apple entrenched.
This is exactly the reason app stores should be banished! I want explicit control over my software and I don't want it to update without my explicit consent. There's a trend recently in desktop software to remove features / settings in favor of a simplified mobile-first design, and too often a version from 5 years ago is better than today's.
I want to keep my software forever. Due to hardware improvements, my copy of Photoshop CS4 works even better now than it did 12 years ago when I bought it. You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands if you want me to switch over to an Adobe CC subscription.
We should tell all the people who have been using Windows for two decades about this.
> whereas linux maintains all of your software for you, keeps it frequently up to date, manages dependencies and does at least SOME level of vetting.
First of all, what vetting? Anyone can become a package maintainer. They then do a package update, but nobody is verifying that they did it correctly. Anyone can sneak a backdoor into a new release of a package. And any hacker can backdoor the source code before it gets packaged. This has happened many times.
Also, the distro often does not keep it up to date. Debian has probably been the worst offender here. Its software is often so ridiculously out of date that you have to use some crappy bleeding-edge release to get a recent version of some software. Or users end up piping an http get into a bash shell as root, which is a super idea.
Finally: dep management? Really? The one thing everyone on Linux bitches about and is always creating some new hokey package manager to solve?
> there definitely are problems with current implementations of app stores in phones, but the idea in general has been a huge boon for security and maintainability.
"This week Google removed 17 Android applications from the official Play Store. According to Viral Gandhi, a security researcher from Zscaler, all 17 applications were infected with Joker (aka Bread). Malware on the Play Store is a common phenomenon and it is a collective duty of both Google and users to deal with them." https://www.gizchina.com/2020/11/02/malware-found-in-the-goo...
Google Play Store: The main source of malware (https://www.androidguys.com/promoted-news/google-play-store-...)
Dangerous Android Malware Returns To Beat Google Play Store Protection (https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/07/09/ldangerou...)
Two-thirds of Android malware comes through Google Play (https://www.tomsguide.com/news/android-malware-google-play)
> if you think that android would be better off without google play you are insane. people would be running insecure nonsense that would be doing stuff like stealing their bank information and all sorts of stuff.
Good thing that never happens on Android, as long as people have the Google Play Store.
Newly Found Malware can steal bank details on Android phones (https://www.hackread.com/malware-can-steal-bank-details-andr...) - "Flash player does not come from the protected Google Play Store but rather from bogus websites and messages which trick the users into installing them in their devices. Websites that the malware usually exists on include adobeplayerdownload.com, adobeflashplaayer.com, and flashplayeerupdate.com."
And you're right, it's worse than that. They're not even getting the security they've trade their freedom for.
You'd think stealing 30% of the profits and booting apps off the store for no good reason would be enough.
The arguments like "unlike Google, they actually listen to their users" sound similar to "this guy is a complete tyrant, but look, his interests are aligned with ours, for now". History has shown where this road goes.
I think, the only way to have a fair "app store" is to somehow model the recommendation mechanics of the pre-monopoly era. 50 years ago you would learn about a new product from your friends (i.e. people you trust) or a newspaper you would buy (i.e. the "influencer" you trust). Each person had their own circle of friends and trusted "influencers", and made their decisions based on them. There wasn't any central authority that could apply the same ranking algorithm to what 100 million different people get to see.
This could be modeled fairly well with decentralized mechanisms. Where the weight/rating of an app is different for each user, and it strictly comes from the approval of that app by the people they trust. If you get too much spam this way, just track down the source in your trust network and untrust them.
Windows is ironically an extremely open system. All users are very used to doing what other platforms would call side loading. And all apps on windows have developed their own methods for receiving updates.
The Microsoft store for windows is pretty sad. Not because the interface sucks, at least not more so than google or apple ones, but because there isn't a real incentive for developers or users to use it.
Searching for a ssh client on the windows store shows ZERO free options, and all of them look worse than PuTTY. They are in the windows store strictly for visibility; which is a good use of an app store. But without the major players who don't need the limited visibility of that store, they users won't think to look there for their needs as well.
If Microsoft rebranded their app store the Github app store, Or made some easy pipeline for github actions to publish to their store; there would be a fair amount of people yelling "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" as well as fearing that microsoft is using the good will of GitHub to get to a similar world of the closed gardens of the others.
Lastly, Microsoft has not done so well in the mobile phone markets. Creating an android store similar to F-Droid would be a hard sell and limited appeal. Google very likely won't let you install the windows app store from the google app store. Apple will never allow a competitor on their platform _at all_ unless legally required.
I don't see how a GitHub app store could succeed.
But I switched to Linux, so I could not use any of the Microsoft tooling. Unless the store deployment can run on WINE?
Not true. It solves app distribution, install, and updates. We used it for an education app a couple of years ago and it was great.
Before that we used Electron with Squirrel and it was horrible for our users. For some reason the app wasn't installed in the start menu and if they deleted the desktop shortcut it was impossible for them to find it again.
Teams is a competitor of Slack, so going windows only would be stupid.
And among all other options, right now using electron is the most popular for cross platform apps. moreover, it also allows teams to have a single version for web and desktop
https://telegra.ph/GitHub-Should-Start-An-App-Store-01-31
Did not expected this to blow up. Thanks for the critical feedback. You guys are tough crowd :)
I wouldn't say they were "awesome" during the youtube-dl stuff. They were slow to respond and non-transparent about what was happening behind the scenes.
Also, user's have been calling for GitHub to terminate their contract with ICE for a long time now[0] to no avail.
GitHub is better than most, no doubt, when it comes to "listen[ing] to their users" but they still have a ways to go.
MS is beholden to US.gov through contract cash and unspoken agreements - those ties are lessening, but are still pretty deep.
Today it's just companies reacting to any specific issue internet mob in social media has. They ban specific people or organizations based on mob activity.
Github has very few attributes that make it suitable as an app store. Sure, you could add payments on top of it, you can make an interface for downloading releases or subscribing. Or anyone else could build an app store and just use Github repos as an upstream if they care about that stuff. The Github API is good, it wouldn't be hard to for any existing app store to add more integration.
And how would this help with anything? Is Microsoft better positioned than Amazon to get apps onto Android devices? Is anyone positioned to get a 3rd-party app store on iOS?
What does this solve that FDroid doesn't already solve, how would it better than what we have, and what does Github's core functionality (hosting source code) have to do with distributing apps? If the goal is just to have reproduceable builds or something, most consumers don't care about that.
I don't understand what's unique about Github that means they would have any advantage in this space. Most of what the author is saying is that they trust Microsoft. But Microsoft has an app store. Why wouldn't they just focus on improving that? If they can't get that store on Linux or iOS, why would Github be different?
I really just don't get what Github could do that would make me as a consumer prefer it over FDroid as a distribution channel. And Windows is already a reasonably open platform already. Certainly on Linux, there's no advantage whatsoever. I feel like there's something I'm missing, I don't understand the gist of what the poster is trying to say. I don't get what the point would be.
The only thing I can think of would be adding better support for payments and buying things from repos. But going down that path is problematic because the whole point of Github is that the releases and code that you list is public. A tightly integrated system that made paywalled build artifacts would be a downside, not an upside. The stuff they're already doing with sponsorships is a much better direction for them to go.
I'm afraid all the reasons the author lists, just boils down to: 'GitHub (Microsoft) should host all our apps because they listen to their users!'
What could possibly go wrong?
Maybe we shouldn't trust MS, but ourselves.
A MS controlled App Store is as bad or good as a Google or Apple controlled App store. Good for some peace of mind and trust, that they won't distribute malware ( ... already broken tough), bad for the fact that they control it we would still rely on the benevolence of a dictator.
Some of us remember Microsoft setting personal computing back ten years by using their market power to foist sub par, frankly rubbish, system software on computer users.
There is no sign they have changed their business practices. It is just now they are the underdog.
Full respect is due to MS for turning their business around, but they are playing catchup now. If they ever get back out in front, watch out!
"Tired of big tech censoring apps? Let's have big tech manage an app store, that'll solve it".
or
"Tired of one big tech censoring apps? Let's have another one, the one and only!".
Plus I am sure others have mentioned it by now but GitHub Issues for user feedback is going to suck big time.
With both of those restrictions eliminated with the internet there's two security venues: bugs in Software with remote access without authentication, and code execution access (currently handled via several security access levels).
The later has proven difficult as it's gone from "1" unlimited via physical access to "distrust the user". App stores being the latest version of trust with perhaps Apple iPhone as one of the highest examples and most restrictive (presently in the name of user privacy vs Facebook).
Github is also "1:many" in terms of supported devices supported. Once an app store exists, the number supported platforms is constrained. The door is opened to competitors to host both a repository and an app store for another platform. Omitting the app store the ecosystem remains neutral to which device runs the end result
That is not the feeling a "Wild West" environment gives to 99% of people using these devices. It is much closer to Russian Roulette than anything else.
Killing app stores would paradoxically dramatically shrink the market for software and cause massive consolidation on the developer side. The big players with big budgets and marketing clout would survive but it would devestate most others and shrink the overall market by 40-50%. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why by applying the same principles folks on HN use every day to optimize customer acquisitions, increase ARR, etc. When every app asks for your credit card (and they would) you automatically shrink the funnel dramatically. That doesn't even begin to consider all the scams, subscriptions you can't actually cancel, or malware that deliberately subverts sandboxes or plays silent audio to continuously run in the background to kill your battery.
There's a natural incentive if stores compete for developers: reduce commissions. The end result of that is get rid of review or any other quality control standards because those things cost money. The large players won't participate because they'll want to keep everything for themselves. You can forget about anything that improves privacy or makes your life easier as an end user.
For end users the bar to jump through all those hoops and take on the security and financial risks will be much higher. They will buy less software.
It amazes me how quickly some of my fellow nerds will fall into the same myopic traps over and over without consideration for the other 99% who aren't computer experts. And without consideration for what it takes to actually run and be successful in business. Just because it would be more convenient for them personally.
You're making it sound like app stores have fixed something but I'm failing to see what. Maybe on iOS it gives some exposure/discoverability to new apps. But I don't see that as an overwhelming feature for end users. This used to exist outside of app stores as web based directories and that worked better in my opinion.
It'll take some serious antitrust action before real competition will be allowed to improve costs and experiences for developers and users alike when it comes to mobile app distribution. In the meantime, Apple and Google will continue to keep a stranglehold on the app distribution market like they have for over a decade now.
I need a Samsung phone to use the Galaxy Store.
I wish google would not do that...
The debacle IMO was all the folks who thought GH taking down youtube-dl was newsworthy at all in the first place. The infantile dependency is the problem, not the lack of yet another gatekeeper.
> I trust [MS] more than Apple and Google.
Thank you for the LOL. Look, VSCode is nice but don't be so naive.
Anyone can start an "app store", but can they make money at it? If MS thought they could make money running an app store would they hesitate? (Also, they already have an app store.)
Let's wait and see history repeating itself. I don't buy that and I will never forget.
Once a competitor is able to operate in both Android and iOS, I think we will see a real threat to official app stores, whether it's Github behind it or someone else.
Does that get abused? Arguably - yes.
Is it overall a good trade-off? Depends on your use case. Want "full" control of your whole mobile device? Get a Pine phone or rooted Android, etc
What any app you download to be highly-likely to be free of bugs and spyware? Go for an iOS device
Technically, Android doesn't have a One True App Store. But in practice, Google Play is the standard app store and 99% of users use it exclusively, at least in the West. It is in fact the one true app store for Android.
So Google does in fact control the Android app store (the one that counts, anyway). The reason why Google Play has so many shitty apps is because Google simply doesn't care about curation in the same way Apple does. That's true for every Google product, by the way. They strongly favor algorithmic curation, while Apple also relies heavily on human curation.
If Apple allowed alternative app stores, nothing would change as far as the standard iOS app store is concerned. 99,99% of users would keep using the Apple app store unless there was a very compelling reason for using an alternative.
Hosting your own apt repo isn't as difficult as it looks (all you need is a static file server) so it's a nice way to host your software if you have a collection of it.
A good amount of competition will help solve a lot of problems, and very strongly highlight the ant-competitive practices inherent in these value chain verticalizations.
I respect Google wants to form a Union to influence who can and cannot be on YouTube, at the same time, I want absolutely nothing to do with some foreign special interest group dictating content to me, so let's have some choice, thanks.
So that it too can become an Apple / Google App Store where it can also control which apps, repositories are allowed or not? Essentially you're moving to another centralised platform, but the reason is because they 'listen to their users'? No thanks and no deal.
Hosting an app repository on your own website is fine and already decentralised. So far, Cydia and F-Droid are doing it right with being a potential alternative App Store.
Mathworks (MATLAB) has a decent version of this: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/
People can provide feedback and ratings which makes it easy to see when projects are dead or when there are big issues that aren't being fix. You can also reference other projects - "This project is like that project but it is faster ..."
I don't think PyPi is all that good for this. Also, I've never really invested the effort to learn how to deploy an application to PyPi whereas something that simply points to my repo may be valuable?
Anyway, the main problem I want solved is not having people discover my code (although that would be great too), but being able to find other code more easily so I don't need to constantly reinvent the wheel.
Except various edge cases, you can technically visit any website that is served from any server, or you can install any application that has the correct binaries for your platform. What makes mobile devices different in this regard?
Apple offers a walled garden as an offering to i-device users. Other companies try to mimic Apple's success. Mobile devices simply do not have the same "must be able to install anything" requirements that a standard computer has.
If an application is properly sandboxed, and I can fully control the permissions of that sandbox, then I see no problems with that.
It's actually fun to do "apk add audacity" (yeah, there's also multiple gui frontends...) and have it installed and working as well as on desktop. OK, that one uses a traditional desktop interface, but it is still usable. Plug it into a docking station and use a mouse and keyboard + screen if you prefer.
Okay, that's not really sideloading, especially as each distro has its packaging format. You can use flatpaks for this (and they are sandboxes), some CIs provide builds as flatpaks (KDE does this).
One issue is that Linux executables are still very much architecture-dependent.
I like the pinephone and am going to buy one myself but I'm buying it because of linux reasons, not because I actually think it will be a good daily driver.
1. I did say it was usable, I am pretty sure most people could use it, although it wouldn't be a great pleasure (an personally I loathe these "addictive" mobile interfaces). One could get real work done with it.
2. I did say there was a gui for this. You don't have to type that if you don't want to. There are multiple gui front-ends with categories, descriptions, screenshots, ratings, etc. Courtesy of appstream metadata and packagekit, that both abstract away platform-specific package manager subtleties and provide "modern" store metadata.
3. This way a contrived example, there are simpler tools if all you want is record & play back.
4. "fun" is very subjective, that was part of my point.
Oh, and while we're on it, most distribution repositories are in fact walled gardens with a curated software selection (the audacity example above is part of it). That doesn't prevent you from sideloading whatever you want.
Moderation is orthogonal to stores.
We don't need stores. Some people might need filters. And multiple filters could exist for different audiences (children, grandmas who lack computer knowledge, etc.)
They need moderation because stores comes with policies.
-- Brand: A rebrand may make sense too, similar to GitHub Actions incorporation of azure automation. But probably less so given the wider non-dev audiences who would consume this stuff: They'll trust MS over GH.
-- B2B: This already covers cloud apps. I see GH as one of the bigger advantages Microsoft has over Amazon + Google as server software moves more and more to a 'shift left' world. AFAICT, this is less of a question of 'if' and more of 'when'. Unfortunately for everyone, MS is historically slow here. A surprise push here may end up being Teams.
Consumer seems a lot harder, but maybe:
- Desktop: MS has a big consumer games division (XBox..). Doing MS Desktop Games via a MS App Desktop Store, similar to Google Play for driving Android marketplace, may work for pushing regular consumer apps as well. They can already do for Windows (if they haven't, I don't follow), and maybe compelling enough for Apple to want to bring to OS X?
- Mobile: This is about Microsoft's ability to win over or open Apple, Google, and the top 10 Android vendor for fairly controlled mobile experience.. which is historically unlikely..
Let me just install an app by browsing a regular website, not being funneled through somebody's portal. That's how every other computer in history has installed apps. It's not perfect but it certainly has none of the downsides of app stores.
Why do we even need app stores? Why can't we all get comfortable downloading from the Web on mobile like we are on the desktop?
The only benefit to them I see is discoverability, so instead of building "stores" why don't we build collections of applications from around the Web and display them in an app store-like interface. Developers can submit applications, they will show up in our "store" making them searchable and discoverable by users, and when users hit download it will take them to the developers Website to download and install an apk or whatever.
IMO the the package managers for most linux distros are better than either mobile app store. There is also flathub and the snap store. Macs of course have the apple app store, and homebrew is fairly prevalent as well. Even windows has AppGet and unofficial package managers like chocolatey. Maybe none of these are what the author thinks desktop "deserves", but if so, then what would be? And why would GitHub be any better at it than any of its tried and tested predecessors
Github is not "backed" by Microsoft. Microsoft owns them. Github is Microsoft. This article is asking Microsoft to start an App Store, which they have already done. It's called Windows Phone Store. The article should be asking Microsoft to rebrand Windows Phone Store, not asking Github to make a new app store altogether.
I see the same thing happen with Twitch and Amazon. It feels like people don't understand how much influence and control is exerted on even the most independent subsidiaries, and how that control only increases year-over-year. Especially when it comes to something that generates money.
>The core message everybody on today’s call stressed was that GitHub will continue to operate as an independent company.
>n our interview, he also stressed that his focus will be on making “GitHub better at making GitHub” and that he plans to do so by bringing Microsoft’s resources and infrastructure to the code hosting service, while at the same time leaving it to operate independently.
>We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which will retain its developer-first ethos operate independently and remain an open platform
Just now we have a situation where you can't even install an alternative app store in one platform and the other one is crippled.
And don't tell me apple has a small market share or you can use another vendor. Back when Microsoft was being forced to open up it was as extremely easy to install another browser and they still had to go to court.
1. There is no GitOS. So the target environment would be so variable and high friction that it's unclear to me how GitHub would manage clean builds and installation.
2. I'd say MOST repos aren't anywhere near ready to run. Making an automated binary/msi/apk/ pathway would almost certainly lead to broken packages for the majority of repos.
Edit: It’s interesting to notice throughout the comment section all the places where ‘App Store’ has been (presumably) automatically capitalized.
Just download the proper release for your platform and Rock'n'Roll.
iOS / Mac? Appel doesn't even allow anything alike on iOS, and for Mac, Apple could pull out developer certificate for whatever reason.
Android? Will that be bundled by Phone markers? If not how are the 2.5B of Google Android users going to get it?
Windows, what are the benefits?
I am not understand the reason other than I want an App Store that is not coming from Big Tech. And arguably Github is part of Big Tech ( Microsoft ).
So GitHub will not be fundamentally better than Google in this respect.
Beg to differ. They have far less problems to worry about when hosting the only the source code. Now if they host entire apps they will most likely be required to moderate the content in the apps. Its not a random company. MS will want to maintain their brand image and regulations. This will lead to the same problems sooner or later.
Would love to hear OSS App authors thoughts on this. I've seen some complaining about the review system on the App Stores, but I think it could also add a lot of maintenance burden, so wondering what they think.
Looking at the story for Elements app they most likely had childporn hosted on the matrix.org server, any compagny would have done the same.
...or we should all join the distributed app revolution made possible by holochain's DHT+git+signatures+gossip Rails-like distributed app framework, and use holo's app store to download and use fully distributed apps [1]?
[1] http://holo.host
It will be interesting if a 'pay per use' model for software can emerge in the independent/casual source market.
Maybe currently they are more developer friendly. But it changed under current CEO. That means bus factor is 1. What one CEO does, other may undo. Doesn't sound wise to rely on MS.
Maybe GitHub should be offering additional services to better help pipe projects into all kinds of app distribution mechanisms. App stores, platform package managers (apt dnf ports homebrew), language package managers (gems pip maven CPAN npm etc), stand-alone installers (dmgs install exe-s), maybe even containers.
These services could form a layer with some autonomy from the underlying project — the author of the project rarely handles alll (or sometimes any) of the distro channels.
Anecdotally I feel like most of this stuff happens outside of GitHub, which is fine and actually good, but maybe there are things GitHub could do to smooth the process? To help the original authors arrange things in releases or set metadata in a way that’s useful downstream to packagers?
But some of it happens in projects already, sometimes for a desktop type app you’ll see a dmg or some other installer right in the project files. This could probably be more standardized.
I agree with your interpretation. GitHub already allows projects to publish release builds. They could provide a new search form that looks somewhat like an "app store" where you could search for ready-to-install packages.
I do not wish for 10 App Store's to exist in the world and have to distribute to each one.
There already is the best platform available, it is called the Web. The problem is Apple purposely holding back PWAs so they can keep earning their Apple Mafia Cut.
I truly belive that for most apps excluding games, PWAs are the way to go. Truly cross platform, low on download speed, and can have almost identical functionality like most of the apps.
That is why I am stocked for Flutter Web, when it gets production ready, it can truly be a game changer. I am currently forced to make mobile apps, since PWAs are just not that popular nor ideal (Apple problems as I stated above), but I am using Flutter which is honestly fun and the best solution.
Make Apple (and Google, although they already have access on most of it) to their API, that is most notably the ability for PWAs to push notifications.
If you just want to sell a one-off app use itch.io, they charge and pay VAT for you! (but they don't have recurring)
Having those packages verifiably built from source could technically be done by any trusted third party, so it's a pity that this project didn't take off:
https://hackernoon.com/what-if-we-could-verify-npm-packages-...
Okay, it doesn't host proprietary apps, but whatever. The point is, this isn't a tech problem anymore, it's not a problem where someone can just make a new platform to solve everything.
Google has contracts with phone manufacturers that ban them from adding 3rd-party app stores alongside Google Play. And none of these app stores are going to show up on iOS. It's a cultural/legal problem at this point.
Otherwise, community maintained (even private) software repos are already a thing. We don't really need people to build more of them, we need people to start using them, and for mobile platforms to support them.
That's kinda like Microsoft requiring a payment for every PC sold whether their OS was installed or not. Predatory contracts from a monopolistic company... who would have thought.
You mean like downloading a tarball and compiling it yourself?
Yeah - that is totally a Good Idea™
The king is dead long live the king?