Hello together, I was browsing GNOME Software today, and noticed some very strange "Socialize"[1] software, which included various crypto currency clients, Remote Desktop software as well as the Brasil Tax Form Software for 2022. While all this software is legitimate, I'm wondering how well it is for "socialising". All this software is based on the "Network" category from the free desktop standards.[2]
Looking into the standards I found the specification of the categories[3], listing all kinds of different software as Network. Basically everything that doesn't fit any other category and uses network connections (i.e. Chat, Dialup, HamRadio, News, RemoteAccess, WebDevelopment, …), which brings me to the question: How useful is this main category? "Uses network" is way better expressed by requiring a network permission, rather than a category, especially since other software may use a network connection while not being in that category. Could we come up with a more useful category/categories? E.g. Social (for Chat, IRCCLient, InstantMessaging, Telephony and VideoConference), Browse (for WebBrowser, News, Feed, FileTransfer), Connectivity (for P2P, RemoteAccess, HamRadio, Dialup) I'm open for different ideas. Maybe we just need to make the Network category description more clear in its meaning. What do you think? [1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/-/blob/f1b0d1fdf317e16d22c6e511fce17c4f3fbe9732/lib/gs-desktop-data.c#L135 [2]: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html#main-category-registry [3]: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apas02.html -- Signed Sheogorath OpenPGP: https://shivering-isles.com/openpgp/0xFCB98C2A3EC6F601.txt
