Free Software Melbourne
21st July 2016
Lilly Ryan - Scientific Hooliganism
(What we can learn from the first hack in history)
City of Casey Budget
... and all the Gnews that's fit to project
Hosting provided by Electron Workshop, System Saviour & Ben Sturmfels
City of Casey Budget Proposal
Summary & Recap
- Summary of submission
- Feedback
- Improvements
Working Group
- Starting on the 4th of August
- Dinner @ La Porchetta (308 Victoria St, North Melbourne) from about 6:00
Gnews :: Things to do
EFF Opposing Trans-Pacific Partnership
SysAdmin Day
- July 29, 2016 – 17th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day
- Website
EFF Urges us to Fight Rule Changes Expanding Government Powers
- expand the government’s ability to hack users’ computers and interfere with anonymity
- "government is attempting to use a process designed for procedural changes to expand its investigatory powers"
- rule changes would authorize warrants to remotely access, search, seize, or copy data on computers, wherever in the world they are located
- allowing a court to issue a warrant to hack into the computers of innocent Internet users who are themselves victims of a botnet
- asking website owners to embed on their sites unique code that will display a banner allowing people to email members of Congress or sign a petition opposing Rule 41
- Letter to congress
- Article
- Campaign (with embed)
The Internet shouldn’t have a toll booth
- OpenMedia campaign to Regulators in Europe
- Telecom companies are pushing for a scheme that would give them the power to put a toll booth on the Internet, making websites they don’t like slower and more expensive to access.
- Sign you name to endorse our letter below ahead of regulators' August 30th decision.
- Campaign
Tell W3C: We don't want the Hollyweb
Gnews :: Free Culture
KDE e.V. Joins Advisory Board of The Document Foundation
- KDE Community has been creating Free Software since 1996
- lots of synergies in areas ranging from document filter technologies over to volunteer-driven governance to explore
- KDE e.V. was one of the first Free Software non-profit organizations incorporated according to German law
- Article
- develop degree programs using open-source materials in place of textbooks
- degrees in business administration, general education, computer science and social science
- could save students as much as $1,300 a year
- offering $9.8 million in grants to support the development of open-source degree programs at 38 colleges in 13 states
- About 50 percent of the schools already use open-source materials in some classes, while another 20 percent have degree programs that primarily or solely rely on those materials
- There are now more than 100,000 students enrolled in open educational resource courses at the 23 schools in the Virginia Community College System
- Article
- Article
Linux Grabs More Than 2% of Desktop Market Share
Mozilla Is Open-Sourcing Its New Logo Design
- "It's a just wordmark, and a handful of muted colors. No logo, no social media favicon, no tagline, no custom font. Those are all aspects of a visual identity we're lacking." The fact that Mozilla doesn't really have these things is part of the reason, he says, that most people don't know what Mozilla's mission
- That's because they're going around their rebrand in the most Mozilla way possible—by opening it up to the community and getting people involved before the brief has even been written
- Mozilla will hold an event with 1,200 members of the Mozilla community, and ask them to give their feedback on seven conceptual directions, which will ultimately guide the rebrand
- spending all of July concepting and presenting different options to the community for feedback
- We held an open house at a Mozilla all-hands meeting last week, and 150 Mozillians showed up to offer passionate (and contradictory) feedback
- Here’s what we’re doing. We’re asking for ideas and feedback while pulling back the curtain on how brand identity is done. We’re listening, panning for gold in the comments. We’re not crowd-sourcing. No voting, hijacked or otherwise, will take place. We’re open-minded, not naive.
- Article
- Best (misleading) tag line
- Video
- Blog
Pinterest Acquires Team Behind Fleksy
- keyboard app for blind users in the iOS App Store, long before Apple supported third-party keyboards
- Why: says that it will be open-sourcing some of its components specialized for the blind and visually impaired
- Announce
Gnews :: Free Software and the Australian Government
Evoting a bad idea?
- To build an end-to-end e-voting system would be an absolute money pit
- We could not guarantee that it would be even as secure as our current voting system and we couldn’t guarantee that people would trust it more than the current system
- Room for promoting FOSS as trustworthy, eg BitCoin
- Article
Doubts about the accuracy of the Senate vote
- until the Australian Electoral Commission agrees to publicly release the computer code it uses
- University of Melbourne researchers recomputed the NSW local government election results from 2012, finding two errors in counting - one of which showed a candidate's chances of election significantly being reduced
- NSW Electoral Commission on Tuesday announced it had corrected the software
- When the ACT Electoral Commission released its counting code, researchers at Australian National University found three bugs which were subsequently fixed before an election
- However, the AEC has resisted releasing the code it uses to count the Senate vote, despite a Senate motion and a freedom of information request.
- Article
South Australia Refuses To Stop Using An Expired, MS-DOS-Based Health Software
- sued for refusing to stop using CHIRON, an MS-DOS-based software from the '90s that stores patient records
- license expired in March of 2015, but they claim it would be risky to stop using it: jeopardise patient safety and there would be a material risk to SA Health's ability to provide an effective health service
- CHIRON's vendor, Working Systems, says SA Health has been the only user of CHIRON since 2008
- Working Systems are suing South Australia for using a product without a license but won't renew said license
- a licence extension for CHIRON was not possible because it was too old
- " I'm sorry that your old software was so un-agile that it was actually "done" in the '90s and probably needs no further patches in order to remain fit for purpose until 2038"
- Article
Gnews :: Free Software and other Governments
UN Council: Nations, Stop Switching Off the Internet!
- More than 80 civil society organisations joined ARTICLE 19 in calling for the adoption of a strong resolution by consensus.
- officially condemned the practice of countries shutting down access to the internet
- Four amendments pulling out that language were tabled, but none were adopted after an impassioned debate
- "The resolution is a much-needed response to increased pressure on freedom of expression online in all parts of the world."
- Address security concerns on the Internet in accordance with their obligations to protect freedom of expression, privacy and other human rights
- people have the same rights online as offline
- measures to "intentionally prevent or disrupt access" to the internet are also "condemned unequivocally,"
- Adopt a “human rights based approach” to provide and expand access to the Internet
- Article
- Article
Bulgaria Got a Law Requiring Open Source
- amendments to the Electronic Governance Act were voted in parliament and are now in effect
- All such software will also be required by law to be developed in a public repository
- Existing solutions are purchased on licensing terms and they remain unaffected
- It means that whatever custom software the government procures will be visible and accessible to everyone
- A new government agency is tasked with enforcing the law and with setting up the public repository
- "I think this is a good step for better government software and less abandonware and I hope other countries follow our somewhat “radical” approach of putting it in the law"
- Article
Net Neutrality Advocates To FCC: Put the Kibosh On Internet Freebies
- Fight the Future, the Center for Media Justice and Free Press on Friday hand-delivered a 6-foot tall package containing 100,000 letters of complaint to the Federal Communications Commission.
- take action against AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile and Verizon for violating the agency's Open Internet order
- Zero-rating is a practice in which wireless and broadband providers exempt certain applications or services from monthly data caps
- While the practice offers some benefits to customers, critics say it violates the agency's Net neutrality principles
- The FCC has said it's met with each of the companies privately, but hasn't talked about the specifics from those discussions.
- "It's really discouraging to see these groups representing the digital elite put their own slanted views ahead of what's best for American consumers, particularly those living paycheck to paycheck," -executive director for Mobile Future
- Article
GitHubs's transparency report for 2015: DMCA notices removed more than 8,200 projects
- 2015, we received significantly more takedown notices, and took down significantly more content, than we did in 2014
- every now and then we receive a single notice asking us to take down many repositories
- fewer than twenty individual notice senders requested removal of over 90% of the content
- Also Subpoenas, Court Orders, and Search Warrants Received reported
- Github received seven gag orders in 2015, up from four in 2014
- Report
- Article
Gnews :: Open Hardware / Firmware
Sony Agrees To Pay Millions To Gamers To Settle PS3 Linux Debacle
- Sony and lawyers representing as many as 10 million console owners reached the deal , gamers are eligible to receive $55 if they used Linux on the console
- also provides $9 to each console owner that bought a PS3 based on Sony's claims about "Other OS" functionality
- gamers eligible"must attest under oath to their purchase of the product and installation of Linux, provide proof of their purchase or serial number and PlayStation Network Sign-in ID, and submit some proof of their use of the Other OS functionality."
- Alternatively, according to the deal, to get $9, a gamer "may attest that he or she lost value and/or desired functionality or was otherwise injured as a consequence of Firmware Update 3.21 issued on April 1, 2010."
- employ the PlayStation network's e-mail database to notify its customers about the settlement. "Additionally, the Notice Program provides for Internet notice via banner ads and search-related advertising
- Article
- Accord
Razer has announced another Open Source Virtual Reality headset: The HDK2
- 2160x1200 resolution OLED display - 100 Hz IR camera for positional tracking - priced at $400
- "OSVR has an open framework so it will be able to work with a variety of controllers"
- supports several content technologies, including SteamVR
- support of OpenVR does not mean that SteamVR games will work under Linux
- Article
Open Source OpenAI: We're Working On a Robot For Your Household Chores
- OpenAI leaders said they don't want to manufacture the robot itself, but "enable a physical robot [...] to perform basic housework
- OpenAI's recently-opened Gym Beta is targeting advances in reinforcement learning, because it is achieving good results in varied settings
- plans to build an agent that can understand natural language and seek clarification when following instructions to complete a task
- Article
- Blog
Intel x86s hide another CPU that can take over your machine
- you can't audit it. When these are eventually compromised, they'll expose all affected systems to nearly unkillable, undetectable rootkit attacks
- Although the ME firmware is cryptographically protected with RSA 2048, researchers have been able to exploit weaknesses in the ME firmware and take partial control of the ME on early models
- There is no way for the x86 firmware or operating system to disable ME permanently
- In this case, it is impossible to break unless you have a way to factorize semi-primes with approximately 600 decimal digits in a reasonable time
- Intel: "In the case of the Intel Management Engine, there are mechanisms in place to address vulnerabilities should the need arise"
- Article
- Intel Article
Kickstarter: Omega - embedded linux for IOT
- smallest Linux server, with Wi-Fi built-in.
- integrated Wi-Fi and on-board flash storage. This means that it springs to life the moment you power it on.
- affordable, starting at $5 ... probably not beginners level
- Kickstarter
Gnews :: Releases
Release of Mesa 12.0
- OpenGL 4.x support: notably adds open-source OpenGL 4.3 drivers for Intel, Radeon, and NVIDIA on Linux
- mainlines the previously open-sourced Intel Vulkan graphics API driver
- a while back Intel added Vulkan API support [intel.com] to its open source driver for its own graphics chips, and that is what has been integrated into Mesa
- easier for multiple drivers to co-exist on the same system and other improvements
- gallium software driver
- Article
- Announce
Red Hat Launches Ansible-Native Container Workflow
- a deployment mechanism that runs automated installations
- simple, powerful, and agent-less open source IT automation framework
- complete creation of Docker-formatted Linux containers within Ansible Playbooks, eliminating the need to use external tools
- nice if you've got a largely Redhat shop
- Article
- Code
ECMAScript 2016: New Version of JavaScript Language Released
- very few new features
- developers will finally get a "raise to the power" operator
- support for async functions (initially announced for ES2016), has been deferred until next year's release
- Article
Mozilla Releases First Build of Servo
- Next-Generation Browser Engine
- Packages for macOS and Linux are available
- Mozilla has bundled an HTML-based browser UI... browsing the web is now a web-app
- browser UI is “written entirely in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript” and that it “includes many rich animations and interactions that you would find in native applications but that don’t always perform well in current browsers.”
- Article
- Downloads
- Neon
- Code
KDE Plasma 5.7 Released
- improved workflows, better kiosk support, a new system tray and task manager, and further steps towards Wayland
- builds on the jump List Actions, actions are present in Krunner
- return of the agenda view in the calendar
- volume control applet is now able to control volume on a per-application basis; it even allows the user to move application sound output between devices by just drag and dropping
- support for the windowing system is greatly improved, especially when it comes to tear-free and flicker-free rendering, as well as security
- automatic virtual keyboard
- Announce
- Article
- Source
- Download
Assembly Code That Took America to the Moon Now Published On GitHub
- using GitHub to submit funny issue tickets for the 40-year-old code -- for example, "Extension pack for picking up Matt Damon". Another issue complains that "A customer has had a fairly serious problem with stirring the cryogenic tanks with a circuit fault present." Because this issue succinctly describes the Apollo 13 mission
- Ron Burkey transcribed it from scanned images of the original hardcopies MIT had put online. That is, he manually typed out each line, one by one
- last Thursday (July 7), when former NASA intern Chris Garry uploaded the software in its entirety
- Article
- Video
Microsoft Open-Sources 'Checked C,'
- address a series of security-related issues
- buffer overruns, out-of-bounds memory accesses, and incorrect type casts would be easier to catch in Checked C.
- the problem of porting code to Checked C still exists, just like it did when C# or Rust came out, both C alternatives
- best comment "C99 already has a bounded pointer type"
- Announce
- Code
- at the Red Hat DevNation conference showing the release and our partnership with Red Hat
- Scott Hanselman will demonstrate .NET Core 1.0. .NET Core is now available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift via certified containers
- Over time, we noticed that all of the major web platforms were open source
- With today’s releases, ASP.NET Core is now an open source web platform, top to bottom (MIT and Apache 2 licenses)
- Nearly 10k developers contributed to .NET Core 1.0. We never imagined that many folks contributing to the product
- nearly half of all pull requests for .NET Core related projects (e.g. corefx, coreclr) come from the community. That’s up from 20% one year ago
- Announce
- Visual Studio
- Install
With Windows 10 Anniversary Update Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment can run in Windows
- Microsoft and Canonical worked together to bring support for the Bash terminal to Windows 10, it didn't take long for some users to figure out that they could get some desktop Linux apps to run in Windows
- you can even load Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment, making windows 10 look like Ubuntu
- Oh, the irony. It seems that the Year of Linux on the Desktop has finally arrived, but not in a way anyone could have anticipated
- there is some issues with dbus and sometimes VcXsrv crashes, also you can't logout and the only way of exiting is closing compiz
- I also tested xfce4 but in this case only the dbus fix is required for running but this has more bugs.
- Instructions
- Blog
- Article
Gnews :: Cloud
One In Three Azure Virtual Machines Now Are Running Linux
- and has SQL server on the way
- Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich demonstrated SQL Server running on Ubuntu on Docker Swarm on Docker Datacenter on Azure
- will initially put out a version of SQL Server with relational database support, leaving out the spiffy business intelligence side of the software suite for a later date
- But by not making it clear exactly what will be released next year, Microsoft runs the risk of burning the goodwill it has fostered
- Article
- SQL server
Gnews :: Security & Privacy
Cory Doctorow: Peak Indifference
- Every year, the Internet’s reach and popularity has grown. Every year, the extent to which Internet users’ privacy is compromised has also grown.
- it’s time for privacy activists to start thinking of new tactics
- all the data collected in giant databases today will breach someday, and when it does, it will ruin peoples’ lives
- the future is clear: every couple weeks, from now on and for the foreseeable, a couple million people whose lives were just destroyed by a data breach will sheepishly show up on privacy advocates’ doorsteps, ashen-faced like smokers who’ve just received cancer diagnoses, saying, ‘‘I guess you were right. What do we do?’’
- We have to provide courses of action: privacy-protecting tools that let people fight back against the surveillance economy; political campaigns that hang cryptography-fighting politicians and spies up by their ankles and subject them to public ridicule; legal opportunities to seek redress from the surveillance profiteers
- Article
UK Police Accessed Civilian Data for Fun and Profit
- More than 800 UK police staff inappropriately accessed personal information
- privacy advocates are concerned about access to Internet Connection Records
- attempted to take a photo of the driving license and send it to his friend over Snapchat
- shared with third parties outside the police, including some organized crime groups, 877 times
- Big Brother Watch makes several recommendations, including criminal records for serious data incidents, and mandatory reporting of an incident that concerns a member of the public
- Article
- Report
FireFox helps you to segregate their online identities with "container tab"
- sign in into multiple mail or social media accounts side-by-side
- available in the unstable Nightly Firefox (Test Pilot study for the Fall)
- adding this feature to the Nightly releases will allow it to do more research and gather feedback
- four default identities (personal, work, shopping, and banking)
- their own stores for cookies, IndexedDB data store, local storage and caches
- tab is decorated to help you remember which context you are browsing in - “default container” will not have any tab decoration
- Anounce
- Article
Mozilla Is Building Context Graph, a 'Recommender System For the Web'
- helps you understand a topic, and find alternative solutions to a problem
- Context Graph, which in addition also allows browsers to offer useful information without demanding input
- learning how to do something new, like bike repair. Context Graph should be able to help you learn bike repair based on the links others have navigated
- This should work regardless of whom you're connected to, because your social network shouldn't be a prerequisite
- help people find new stuff based on their current context. For example, lots of pages link to a single YouTube video, but there’s no way to get at all those pages from the YouTube video itself. If we can understand this network of links, we can use it to build a better recommendation system
- What concerns us is the long-term impact of a world where a small number of companies dominate the web for discovery and services, and the leverage that creates
- Activity Stream is the first Context Graph feature. The new functionality was made available in the Firefox add-on Test Pilot
- Article
US Security & Privacy
FBI Is Classifying Its Tor Browser Exploit Because 'National Security'
- Mozilla have tried—unsuccessfully—to get access to the vulnerability
- despite the exploit already being used in normal criminal investigations well over a year ago
- The FBI is arguing that the tool and exploit are not simply sensitive law enforcement information, but that they actually constitute information which must be classified in the interests of national security
- It also held a closed-off, and apparently convincing, meeting with a judge to explain its reasoning in more detail
- According to the Department of Justice, the government has a record of mistakenly and inappropriately invoking classification controls
- Article
Government Report Finds US Efforts To Regulate Encryption Have Been Flawed
- lawmakers need to learn more about technology before trying to regulate it.
- Going Dark, Going Forward: A Primer on the Encryption Debate and it does not provide any solution to the encryption fight
- The House committee ultimately calls for more dialogue on the topic and for more interviews with experts. The committee claims its already held more than 100 such briefings, some of which are classified.
- Article
- Report
Snowden Finally Identified As Target of Investigation That Ended Lavabit
- Ladar Levison shut down his encrypted webmail service in August 2013 amid an FBI investigation focused on one of his company's nearly half-a-million customers
- A gag-order that has just recently been vacated in federal has legally prevented him up until now from confirming the account in question was registered to none other than Snowden
- 'While I am pleased that I can finally speak freely about the target of the investigation, I also know the fight to protect our collective freedom is far from over,' Mr. Levison said in a statement. He said he plans to discuss the case further during the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas this summer.
- Facebook post
Aaron Swartz Ebook's DRM Has Been Cracked
- Verso Books published the collected writings of Aaron Swartz
- Institute for Biblio-Immunology cracked this watermarking scheme and released the code to remove this ‘social DRM’ from ePub files
- Article
Gnews :: Distro News
Fedora 24 Released
Ubuntu-Based Peppermint 7 Released
- focused heavily on integrating web applications into the desktop with SSBs, etc. Like Chromebooks, the system requirements were lower because of the reliance on web-based apps
- based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) with LXDE core session management
- switching to Firefox as their default browser over Chrome, gedit to pluma and new settings console
- Announce
- Announce
Slackware 14.2 Released
- Xfce 4.12.1, KDE 4.14.21, NetworkManager and still Systemd-Free
- grant use of various hardware devices according to group membership ... to use items such as USB storage without requiring sudo, the mount or umount command
- noted for being the most Unix-like of all Linux distributions
- switched from udev to eudev
- adds well over a hundred new packages to the system
- Announce
- Changelog
- Download
Linux Mint 18 'Sarah' Released
- Supports Generic GTK X-Apps
- in Cinnamon and MATE flavors
- "new features" page
- improved their update manager
- support for the Debian syntax of "apt"
- edge and two-finger scrolling independently
- New X-Apps project: replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment
- Xed is based on Pluma, Xviewer is based on Eye of GNOME, Xreader is based on Atril, Xplayer is based on Totem and Pix is based on gThumb
- Homepage
- Announce
Gnews :: Unfortunate Gnews
Comodo Attempting to Register 'Let's Encrypt' Trademarks
- security firm Comodo, which as of 2015, was the largest issuer of SSL certificates, last year in October filed for the trademark Let's Encrypt
- Let's Encrypt have asked Comodo to abandon its "Let's Encrypt" applications, directly but it has refused to do so.
- Comodo CEO: "these kind of Intellectual copyrights can't be decided over a forum post or twitter account or trying to get your loyal but "blind" followers to bully another enterprise"
- Announcement
- “Let’s Encrypt” Trademark Registration Application
- Forum
Severe Flaws Found In Libarchive Open Source Library
- Libarchive is an open-source library first created for FreeBSD, but since ported to all major operating systems. It provides real-time access to files compressed with a variety of algorithms
- three memory corruption errors in the widely used open-source library libarchive that can result in arbitrary code execution
- Hat Trick: an integer overflow, a buffer overflow and a heap overflow in
- Can be exploited by passing specially crafted files to applications that contain the vulnerable code
- libarchive maintainers have released patches for the flaws
- This won't be the last time when such flaws are found in widely used libraries and components
- Announce
- Article
Linux Letting Go: 32-bit Builds On the Way Out
- "Building i386 images is not 'for free', it comes at the cost of utilising our build farm, QA and validation time
- doubles our testing burden (actually, more so, do you know how hard it is to find 32-bit hardware these days?). It also doubles our build load on OBS” - OpenSUSE Chairman
- The key point here is lack of upstream software support and upstream security support on i386
- Article
- Mailing List
- Forum
Fair Use Threatens Innovation, Copyright Holders Warn
- music and movie industry groups have warned that fair use exceptions are a threat
- responding to proposals put forward in Australia by the Government's Productivity Commission
- claim that content creators will be severely disadvantaged if fair use is introduced Down Under
- "Innovation is best achieved through licensing agreements between content owners and users, including technological innovators," IFPI writes
- two writers’ guilds describe the draft report as an “attack on the livelihoods” of Australian creators
- Foxtel issues a similar warning about fair use. According to the Australian pay television company, it will directly damage the country’s creative industries
- “Fair use will have negative economic consequences and have a significant impact on creative output due to the associated uncertainties. Foxtel strongly believes that this type of reform will have a significant impact on creative outputs due to the uncertainties it will create,”
- others such as Google welcome it with open arms. According to Google, fears surrounding the uncertainty it would create are overblown
- “Our members rely on the fair use doctrine every day when producing their movies and television shows – especially those that involve parody and news and documentary programs,” the MPAA stated previously
- The final report will be handed to the Government in August and published shortly after
- Literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of everything in this story is true. These "rights holders" can go ...
- Article
Save the Australian Digital Archive Trove
- due to funding cuts to the National Library of Australia
- In 2014, the database's fifth year, an estimated 70,000 people were using the website each day
- Australia Library and Information Association chief executive Sue McKarracher said Trove was a visionary move by the library and had turned into a world-class resource
- "Trove isn't just a nice thing to have, it's not just about digital access to museum pieces or library documents, this is a fundamental piece of our national research infrastructure,"
- "We're hopeful that the Minister will take a look at the idea of [Trove] as a piece of national infrastructure [and see it] as important as roads and transport."
- privatising or charging for items to be added to the online database could result in less institutions contributing material.
- Article
- Audio
Gnews :: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Adios apt and yum? Ubuntu’s snap apps are coming to distros everywhere - or maybe not
- snapd, the tool that allows snap packages to be installed on Ubuntu, has been ported to other Linux distributions including Debian, Arch, Fedora, and Gentoo
- allows users to update and roll back applications without causing problems to the rest of their operating system
- Developers who package applications as snaps can now expect them to run on a bunch of Linux-based operating systems
- driven by open source community members rather than Canonical itself (questionable)
- This daemon verifies the integrity of snap packages, confines them into their own restricted space, and acts as a launcher
- Flatpak is also standards compliant, offering support for the Open Container Initiative specification
- Developers of both Snap and Flatpak say they hope to decrease the fragmentation that makes it hard to package applications for all Linux distributions
- If you want more there is also AppImage and OrbitalApps
- every Snappy committer is a Canonical employee, and contributions to Snappy require signing the notorious Canonical CLA
- Canonical employees have independently built and released Snappy packages for those distributions
- Article
- Article
- Article
- Snap Code
- Flatpak Code
Fedora QA Lead Pans Canonical 'Propaganda' On Snap Apps
- I am not unbiased and am not claiming to be but..
- Canonical employees have independently built and released Snappy packages for those distributions
- they mailed us asking about the process of packaging snappy for Fedora, and we told them about the main packaging process
- Neither Snappy nor Flatpak is at all close to being ‘done’, in the sense of being a credible system for cross-platform app distribution
- Canonical does not offer source code for the server aspect
- Snappy and Flatpak both have fairly complex histories and predecessors, but whichever way you cut it, they've been around about as long as each other
- Article
