From the July 2 Mint blog post:
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766> When Flatpak came out it immediately allowed anyone to create stores. The Flatpak client can talk to multiple stores. Spotify is on Flathub and they can push towards it. If tomorrow they have an argument with Flathub they can create their own store and the very same Flatpak client will still work with it. When Snap came out, it was only a client. The server was behind closed doors and the client couldn’t talk to multiple servers.
and
> Ubuntu is planning to replace the Chromium repository package with an empty package which installs the Chromium snap. In other words, as you install APT updates, Snap becomes a requirement for you to continue to use Chromium and installs itself behind your back.
Yea that seems to me to be a problem.
From the June 1st Mint blog post: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906
> ...in the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.
If I'm reading this right, Snap is basically trying to fix the problem of software dependencies on older packages by bundling things together (a la flatpack)... but it ALSO replaces the various repositories in different distributions of linux with a closed-source, centralized repository that points towards cannonical, and advertises ubuntu to people using other distros and potentially gives cannonical control over the distribution of sotfware in the linux ecosystem. AND it can do this behind the scenes without the knowledge of the users, who may think they're still using their normal repo system.
The whole scheme seems completely antithetical to the principles of FOSS. You don't have to go full Stallman to see this as a bad thing IMO. From that perspective, Mint's decision to drop support for Snap makes a LOT of sense.
Also, one of the reasons I enjoy running linux (I dual-boot with windows) is that it does what I tell it to do, and ONLY what I tell it to do. There's no BS like Cortana auto-installing or onedrive automatically uploading a bunch of my pictures to the cloud (yes that actually happened). I already have a linux distro that takes that benefit away, but I accept that (for now), because it's a phone. I'm not ok with losing that on my desktop.