Auto-connection request for teachnext-app (removable-media)

store-requests privileged-interfaces
1
  • name: teachnext-app
  • description: TeachNext is an educational content delivery application used in schools and classrooms across India. It plays back video lessons, opens PDF course materials, and presents interactive educational content for K-12 students. A significant portion of this content ships on USB drives and external storage distributed directly to schools, as many deployment environments have limited or unreliable internet connectivity.
  • snapcraft: PRIVATE
  • upstream: https://nexteducation.in/
  • upstream-relation: Publisher is the upstream. NextEducation is the developer, maintainer, and vendor of TeachNext, and is directly responsible for packaging and publishing the snap.
  • interfaces:
    • removable-media:

      • request-type: auto-connection

      • reasoning: TeachNext is a media player/viewer whose core workflow involves loading educational content (video lessons, PDFs, interactive materials) from USB drives, SD cards, and external hard disks provided to schools by the publisher.

        This falls under the documented exception in the auto- connection process for removable-media:

        “media (eg, pdf,sound, photo, video) players/viewers (rationale: the software is very often used to import/ preview/playback files on external devices)”

        Deployment context: Our primary users are teachers and students in classrooms, including non-technical users and children. Many target schools are in rural or low-resource areas where shared classroom machines do not grant sudo access to teachers, and where command-line familiarity cannot be assumed. Requiring every end user to run sudo snap connect teachnext-app:removable-media creates a significant barrier that makes the application effectively unusable in its intended environment.

2

This request has been added to the queue for review by the @reviewers team.

3

Hello @rayapatir,

Given the provided context and the snap’s primary functionality as a media player I believe this is a reasonable request. This is a +1 (#voteFor) from me for granting auto-connect of the removable-media interface for the snap teachnext-app. What do other @reviewers think?

@rayapatir, it is important to note that the removable-media interface is super-privileged, so if this request is approved (it needs one more vote) you will need to go through account verification before it can be granted. You can begin this process early if you like by following the steps described in the forum topic Verified Accounts.

Thanks!

4

+1 (#voteFor) from me for granting auto-connect of removable-media to teachnext-app. The snap clearly qualifies as a media player/viewer under the documented exception, and the non-technical classroom deployment context makes auto-connection genuinely necessary.

@rayapatir — before this can be granted you’ll need to complete publisher verification as noted above.

5

There have been a number of snaps requesting this in the past (e.g. firefox, keepassxc, and others). They have historically been denied because a proper solution to this is portals. Has that equation changed?

If not, while the user needing to know about and how to connect an interface is not ideal, I still don’t think that’s a reason to start automatically connecting this interface. Especially when the snap can check to see if the interface is connect (e.g. snapctl is-connected removable-media) and then prompt the user with how to connect it.

I’m -1 on this barring any new information.

6

I’m sorry, I missed the updated guidance on browsers and media players, I agree that this meets the established criteria: +1 from me on removable-media auto-connection. Portals would be better, though.

7

Hi reviewers,

I have completed the publisher verification process for the teachnext-app snap. Please let me know if any additional information is needed to proceed with granting the removable-media auto-connect permission.

Thank you!

8

Thank you reviewers.

I have now submitted a separate Verified Publisher request as requested. Please let me know if any additional information is needed.