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GitHub Should Start an App Store

ankshilp.com

41–50 of 319 posts

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#41
Not gonna happen. Anyone could start an App Store and use GH’s api’s to file issues with developers repos anyway. Microsoft owns App Center (formerly Hockey App) which allows apps to send diagnostics to devs for crashes and the like. I’d expect similar features for GH in the longer term future. But an App Store - prob not. Apple is particularly difficult to develop on and deploy to their store as it is. You can only deploy to test devices with custom policies (app center makes this easier) or jailbreak your device. There’s no way Apple will ever release their monopoly on their App Store. So you’d be looking at an android only App Store (plus windows for whatever that is worth)

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#42
I thought from reading the headline it was a genius idea, but I think after reflection there are at least two major barriers to this working:

1. There is no GitOS. So the target environment would be so variable and high friction that it's unclear to me how GitHub would manage clean builds and installation.

2. I'd say MOST repos aren't anywhere near ready to run. Making an automated binary/msi/apk/ pathway would almost certainly lead to broken packages for the majority of repos.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#43
post #32

> They already host source code of millions of apps. Release integration should be trivial to implement. Release integration is trivial for anyone. It's the easiest and most irrelevant part of the app stores. > Unlike Google they actually listen to their users. They were awesome during youtube-dl debacle. And controversial on others, like shutting down Popcorn Time's repository. As any other, they'll listen if there'…

If you think Microsoft wont turn their back and get on the ban/censorship train like any other company I believe that would be a mistake. They will have some "woke" employees and journalists grill the executives and then they will cave to mob rule just like the rest.

> they will cave to mob rule just like the rest

Would they? Microsoft is still serving ICE, despite all the "grilling".

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#46
post #33

I have a question regarding the moderation needs of stores: why exactly do we need stores for mobile devices, whereas we don't have any store or moderation for installing application on computers, or visiting websites? Except various edge cases, you can technically visit any website that is served from any server, or you can install any application that has the correct binaries for your platform. What makes mobile de…

A walled garden is a plus for most consumers. Especially non-technical consumers who want to download something and be sure it's not spyware that will brick their phone. If you want to be able to install anything you can buy a pinephone but I can't imagine it would be fun to install anything on a pinephone. Apple offers a walled garden as an offering to i-device users. Other companies try to mimic Apple's success. Mo…

> If you want to be able to install anything you can buy a pinephone but I can't imagine it would be fun to install anything on a pinephone.

If an application is properly sandboxed, and I can fully control the permissions of that sandbox, then I see no problems with that.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#47
post #32

> They already host source code of millions of apps. Release integration should be trivial to implement. Release integration is trivial for anyone. It's the easiest and most irrelevant part of the app stores. > Unlike Google they actually listen to their users. They were awesome during youtube-dl debacle. And controversial on others, like shutting down Popcorn Time's repository. As any other, they'll listen if there'…

If you think Microsoft wont turn their back and get on the ban/censorship train like any other company I believe that would be a mistake. They will have some "woke" employees and journalists grill the executives and then they will cave to mob rule just like the rest.

Is hand-wringing over "woke" bogeymen the next evolution of grousing unironically about "SJWs"?

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#50
This doesn't answer the question, an App Store for what?

iOS / Mac? Appel doesn't even allow anything alike on iOS, and for Mac, Apple could pull out developer certificate for whatever reason.

Android? Will that be bundled by Phone markers? If not how are the 2.5B of Google Android users going to get it?

Windows, what are the benefits?

I am not understand the reason other than I want an App Store that is not coming from Big Tech. And arguably Github is part of Big Tech ( Microsoft ).

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