I was wondering, is snapstore really nonfreedom software.
Wikipedia Snap (software) - Wikipedia links to a github repository GitHub - snapcore/snapcraft: Package, distribute, and update any app for Linux and IoT.. But is it complete?
Found this:
Seems like a clever question by Freedom Software enthusiasts is:
Why is there only one Snap Store?
A defender of snapstore wrote this:
Links to this:
https://merlijn.sebrechts.be/blog/2020-08-02-why-one-snap-store/
Quote:
Is the Snap Store open source?
Sadly, part of the Snap store is still closed source. Snap itself is completely open source and many parts of the Snap store are open source like the web-store front-end, the automatic review tools, the build service, the desktop store app, and many more. The back-end hosting the snaps, however, is still proprietary.
Open sourcing the Snap store back-end would require significant changes to it, according to Martin Wimpress of Canonical:
[because of its history,] the Snap store now integrates with other areas of the Canonical infrastructure. So the Snap store isn’t a single thing. It’s not like this one piece of software that you can easily decouple from the rest of the machinery that powers the infrastructure at Canonical. So we can’t just pull it apart and separate it and say, “Here you go, here’s the open source Snap store.
Canonical is doubtful that this investment would be worth it because of what happened with Launchpad. Although they invested significant resources in open sourcing Launchpad, there is still only one instance of Launchpad running and they have not received any significant contributions from non-Canonical employees.
Interestingly, Canonical actually released an open-source prototype Snap store backend a few years ago, but there was very little interest from the community in in actually maintaining and running a second Snap store, so the project bit-rotted and became incompatible with the current Snap protocol.
It links to this:
TechRepublic: Community members have expressed concern about the Snap server being proprietary software. What would be needed for a third party to operate its own Snap server, if it wanted to do so?
Answer here: CXO | TechRepublic
A Freedom Software snap store work in progress at time of writing:
Therefore at time of writing it is safe to conclude that snap store server part is nonfreedom software.