Re: [libreoffice-design] Topic for design team to investigate: Content hosting consolidation on ask.libreoffice.org

On 10/12/18 11:36 AM, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> The second question then is how to get that metadata. E.g. the license has to
> be in the extension itself. So why bothering to ask the uploader about it,
> possibly causing even mismatched metadata, because the manual entry had a
> different value than what is in the metadata of the extension itself.

FWIW, I've come across several instances where the page displaying the
extension, the  page that displays the license when installing the
extension, the license within the package, and the actual license were
all very different. In one instance, the real license was a very
restrictive ARR, whilst the others were either Open Source, or could
have passed as being an open source crayon license.

> Having a metric ton of metadata "just in case" we _might_ _possibly_ use it one
> day is BAD. Asking uploaders for huge amount of metadata in errorprone manual
> entry is WORSE, esp. if that metadata is not useful for meaningful queries.

Based on more than a decade of browsing various repositories, I have
strong doubts that the uploader can provide accurate meta-data.

> that metadata is not needed for a relevant and useful query to find extensions.

For an extension, the minimum required information is:
* What version of LibO was it created for;
* What component of LibO does it work with;
* A description, in less than five English words, of what the extension
does;
* What License is it distributed under;
* How big is it?

I'm including that last one, because some extensions are huge:
* CASS comes in at just under 1 GB;
* A full blown installation of Language Tool is the best part of 40 GB.
(I'm currently at 32 GB, and haven't finished installing it.)
* One of the clip-art extensions comes in at just under 1 GB in size;

> [1] E.g. Sure: we can query extension for the license they are published under
>     and only list those that have one specific license. But is there a
>     realistic use case for that? How many people will do that really?

I for one, don't want to download what looks like a promising extension,
or template, that claims to use an OpenSource license, only to discover
that it really uses a a closed source license along the lines of "All
your Bases, they belong to us". (In either the LibO or AOo extension
repository, there is an extension with a crayon license along those lines.)

> [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Viable_Product

Where does that leave the template/extension combination that
masquerades as an accounting package, whose license prohibits usage
within a commercial context?

jonathon

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