On 05/28/2012 02:58 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:
If the store's HTML works on my device, and if I don't mind getting an
account with the store, and, and...
Some people don't like to get Google accounts. So they can't use the
Android market, even to get free apps written by third parties. That's
wrong - it's centralizing and controlling and unnecessary.
And I don't like that I have to sign up with Quora to read their (free)
content. We certainly can't force people to always be open, as much as
we'd like to. That's just the nature of the web.
Anyone can link to a Marketplace installation page.
Then why can't anyone link to the thing linked to from the Marketplace
installation page?
Because it's not a link. It's an API call: navigator.apps.install().
Installing an app and clicking on a hyperlink are not the same thing! If
you think they should be, I strongly disagree, for several reasons which
we can get into if you'd like.
Perhaps it would
make sense to let an application declare its self-installation page (or
maybe just its preferred installation page, including the Marketplace), so
if you want to do some kind of index of applications you could do so, by
simply scraping known application stores (including the Marketplace) for
manifest URLs.
I'm not quite following what you are saying here.
A store has a special relationship with the applications
you install through the store,
You seem to be assuming this, but for free apps, why does that have to
be true? I don't have a special relationship with websites I link to.
And even someone _selling_ goods in the real world doesn't necessarily
have a relationship with the manufacturer of those goods (although
someone had to have at one point).
We seem to be defaulting to control rather than openness. This is not
very webby.
That's an incorrect statement. We are defaulting to openness and
optionally allowing developers to control how their app is distributed.
Which is still in my book, completely orthogonal to the question of
openness. The way to bring openness is not by forcing our view of the
web (which is still divided even within Mozilla as is apparent from this
thread) on everyone else who chooses to participate in our ecosystem.
The web means a lot of different things to different people.
Why can't I create a store of "all the free task-tracking web apps I can
find"? Just like "here's a list of all the sites I like".
You can create a web page with a list of free task-tracking web apps you
like, and users will be able to follow the links and install them,
either via the developer's site or a store. If the developer of one of
those apps decides to use installs_allowed_from, the only thing you
cannot do is have an "install" button for these apps on your page,
because he doesn't trust your site.
Here is my proposal: we extend the manifest (if it doesn't do this
already) to clearly distinguish between free and paid apps. We then
update the spec to say that install_allowed_from is only honoured for
paid apps, as part of the mechanism to make sure the right person gets paid.
We cannot do this unless we change the whole architecture of how apps
are installed. Try and install an app from the Mozilla Marketplace,
you'll see that there is no interaction between the user and the app
developer until after they've installed and run the app. The developer
is trusting the Marketplace to correctly represent their app, which is
why they chose to list there.
-Anant
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