Wire has been registered in the store for a ‘hello world’ app. However ‘Wire’ is an upstream project name which we have a package being prepared for upload.
I couldn’t find a process by which we rename applications. I note that @noise replied to the telegram-latest thread suggesting we’re not to be heavy handed, so what is the process? Do we hand this to the store team, or do as I suggested to Sergio, and email the developer and let them know we’re taking it?
I appreciate the telegram-latest issue (where an old build of the actual app is in the store under that name) and this (where a simple hello world is all that’s uploaded) are somewhat different, but the net result is the same.
I suggest trying to contact the developer, it’s possible they have been working on something but not published it yet. Highly unlikely given the timeframe since last revision, but can’t hurt to give them an opportunity to defend the name registration. If you fail to get a response or they agree to give it over we can proceed with the transfer, else they will need to justify their claim.
I suggest creating a new topic with the ‘store’ category called ‘Process for revocations’, then create sections within the document for each type of revocation, and we can build them up as we perform them.
This sounds like a rename rather than a revocation, which is something we always envisioned would happen in this sort of case. Indeed the first step is getting in touch with the publisher.
Hi,
I’m the wire publisher. My friends and I were working on this snap. It’s not ready to be published yet. I just answered popey’s email, I didn’t have the chance to have a talk with my partners yet, to be honest. I understand his concern but as far as I know we do want to publish the wire snap.
I’m sorry but would it be that simple? Would I just be notified that the snap I registered is been taken? I don’t recall reading in any Terms of Service that you guys could just take such an action. Did I miss it?
I totally understand the claim. 100%. I just felt scared about the means you are suggesting to follow.
I think the key piece of information we’re looking for is whether you’re working with the upstream wire-desktop project? The goal of the snap store is to have snaps owned by upstream projects themselves. We’re happy for enthusiastic community members to register names in the store, if they plan to contribute the relevant yaml upstream. If upstream don’t wish to accept & maintain the yaml then for sure community maintained snaps are fine.
The reason for requesting the name to be handed over is because it appeared to be speculatively registered, with no actual application uploaded. We now have a yaml which builds a working snap, created by someone other than the person who register the snap in the store. So to clean things up, we wanted to get the application in the store, so users can start testing it, under the official name.
Later, some friends asked me if I wanted to let them help to improve the tool. During a weekend we did lots of things: github repo, tracker, bug fix, etc… I thought that it needed another name (the current name is more like a description than a name) and decided to call it Wire. But then, you know how some opensource projects are, hard to maintain when they don’t give you anything that you can exchange for food!
I’m an enthusiast of free and open source software and I really believe we can use it to make the world better. Now I had the chance to know better the work you guys are doing and I appreciate that. I didn’t know about the Wire app, but looks like it is a really nice upstream project.
So, I don’t have any reason to not allow you guys to have the Wire name… besides the fact that I did not appreciate the idea of taking someone’s snap behind someone’s back. That’s the opposite of what we believe. We want people to be engaged to collaborate helping each other! Anyway, maybe I just got this wrong.
Naming things in the open source world is always fraught. Note that for a long time the well known Chromium web browser was called ‘chromium-browser’ in the deb archive because the name ‘chromium’ had already been taken. Name collisions happen all the time with software, indeed both ‘snap’ and ‘snapcraft’ were taken before we came along!
From the very start of the snap store we’ve had a policy to reserve names for popular products so the ‘rightful’ owner of the name / brand / trademark can register and publish. This also helps users know that applications are officially supported by the upstream developer with updates.
There was no intention to take someone else’s legitimate snap behind their back. We have a snap for the wire application, ready to go to the store with an established name, and you already had registered the name (and four others) with an upload of a “Hello world” application.
The snap does not contain the “JS Hypothetical Machine” or indeed any other legitimate application. The last upload was done 11 months ago, as ‘Hello world’ and has not been updated since. The fact you have a significant number of installs of this wire hello world application suggests to me there is already confusion in the user community that your ‘wire’ app is ‘the’ wire app.
We can optionally go a different route with the official wire application. A number of existing apps in the store are suffixed with -desktop - such as irccloud-desktop. We /could/ rename the wire app as wire-desktop.
However I’m now in the dilemma that the wire app you uploaded isn’t legitimately an application at all (other than a hello world test app) and is in my opinion causing confusion to users. So while we could go for wire-desktop, I’m inclined to think we should take the registered wire name.
I recognize that the upstream ‘wire’ is legitimate;
I support open source initiatives;
Since I never released Hypothetical Machine under ‘wire’ name, nobody knows it;
I can use another name.
So, you guys can take it.
I’m just suggesting that (according to what I’ve seen in this thread) you need to make things clear to the users (developers, community, etc…), that if they register a snap that conflicts (or will conflict) with an upstream project name, and, if they take too long to release the real app and, if they fail to see their emails, they will lose it, because it will be renamed.
@dalmirdasilva Thanks, your patience and collaboration is appreciated. Please note we didn’t just take the name from under you, though. We explicitly said above that we should reach out and talk about the issue with the publisher before anything else.
Then, to be fair we try quite hard to make it clear that we care about names matching user expectations. We recently covered this topic to a good degree here in the forum, and even the command to register names is quite verbose about that:
$ snapcraft register firefox
We always want to ensure that users get the software they expect
for a particular name.
If needed, we will rename snaps to ensure that a particular name
reflects the software most widely expected by our community.
For example, most people would expect ‘thunderbird’ to be published by
Mozilla. They would also expect to be able to get other snaps of
Thunderbird as 'thunderbird-$username'.
Would you say that MOST users will expect 'firefox' to come from
you, and be the software you intend to publish there? [y/N]:
Thank you! 'firefox' will remain available.
In the meantime you can register an alternative name.
