hi,
i've played a little bit with getting Pd up on flatpak (yet another linux package manager), and currently the major showstopper is the app-id (:facepalm:)
the app-id is just a unique identifier for an application, that is based on some (reverese) domain scheme. the app-id is used in a number of places, and for flatpak the app-id *must* match what we have in the "metainfo.xml" file. our "metainfo.xml" file is "org.puredata.pd-gui.metainfo.xml" (found in the linux/ folder). which means that the app-id is "org.puredata.pd-gui".
even though normally the app-id is not very visible to the user, i am sure that i DO NOT want the "pd-gui" part in there (for the full Pd application).
i have no idea what came over me when i picked this id when i added that file to the repository (because obviously it was yours sincerely who did that).
anyhow. since i am about to change this id to some meaningful value, i wonder *which* would be a good one.
the obvious choice is "org.puredata.pd" (removing the "-gui" part).
now, i wouldn't write this email if i had no concerns about this name(and instead i would just change it).
my issue is that this id is depending on the ownership of "puredata.org". now, "puredata.org" is gratefully sponsored to the Pd-community by A.van de Ven (at least it was, last time i was able to check; in the meantime you can no longer check who registered a domain...). while i'm really thankful for this, it also has a few problems: - avdv is not a really active member of the community (afaIk). in fact, it's rather hard to get in contact with them. the last record of a successfull contact between the two of us has been in...2007 or so. the last status i had was that avdv is willing to "perpetually sponsor" the domain, but eternity has become short in these days, and i don't know what will happen if anything ever happens to avdv (so let's hope for the best) - "we" do not really control the nameservers. right now they are setup so that any requests for "puredata.org" or any subdomain thereof just points to the iem's IP address (that runs puredata.info). this kind of works, but only as long as we can serve everything from this IP.
i vaguely remember a problem due to this non-control of the nameservers with the libpd-for-android (or -ios?) packages a couple of years ago.
otoh, "puredata.info" is owned by the iem (my university). while this is very practical for me ("master of the dns" and what not; my bus-factor is another problem in this context, but let's talk about that another time), the real benefit is that the university is not likely to go away within the next decades. unis typically last longer than mere humans/mortals.
so my question is: could (and should) we switch the app-id from "org.puredata..." to "info.puredata...", just in case we ever need to *prove* that "we" actually own the domain.
there are of course caveats: Pd uses the "org.puredata" namespace for storing settings: - the GUI settings (on all platforms) - on macOS it is used for storing the "normal" Pd-settings as well
so changing the namespace to "info.puredata" will discard all settings.
what do you think?
gamsdr IOhannes