Ubuntu
software-center package

"Canonical doesn't provide updates" is a scary message, especially for customers

Asked by Sense Egbert Hofstede

Binary package hint: software-center

In the overview of software in Software Centre that does not come from the officially supported archives, a warning text is shown informing the user that this particular piece of software is not supported by Canonical, but that updates MAY be delivered by the community/a third-party. It is not only shown for software from community-maintained archvies or for PPAs, but also for software that is on sale.

Although this message is factually correct, it is a scary message. Users might get the impression that by default no updates should be expected, but if you are lucky something might be done. Especially for paid applications, this might not be very encouraging towards users.

I would suggest to change the warning from a negative formulation to a positive: updates for this software are provided by X. Not Canonical, etc.

Furthermore, this message is also shown for packages from the Canonical Partner archive--which is maintained by Canonical, AFAI. Is that desired behaviour?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: software-center 4.0.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-9.43-generic 2.6.38.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-9-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat May 28 18:13:11 2011
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=nl:en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=nl_NL.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: software-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2010-11-13 (195 days ago)

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Revision history for this message
c0nsaw (c0nsaw) said : 		#1

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so I am closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker.

c0nsaw

Revision history for this message
Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#2

Since M.S. mentioned on UDS a revision of Software-Center I'd assume Canonical would be happy to listen and respond to your thoughts.
Either bug report could be tagged as 'wishlist' or
post idea
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
and feeback there.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter

Revision history for this message
David Ayers (ayers) said : 		#3

What would also be of interest is a link to a process on what customer could do to nominate and/or help finance a package to be covered by security support. Note I said customer ... not developer. A developer could be pointed to: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MainInclusionProcess but there seems to no way for a customers to voice their wishes in a structured manner.

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