Faulty flatpaks: OBS threatens Fedora with legal action

Joel Bethke, project manager of the open-source video recording and streaming program Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), is threatening the Fedora project with legal action in a dispute over faulty program packages. The reason for this is the faulty Fedora flatpacks of OBS Studio provided in the Linux distribution, some of which lead to crashes.

OBS itself provides a flatpack of the software that can also be used under Fedora. Because users were often unaware that the program packages provided by Fedora did not originate from OBS Studio itself, they reported the problems to the OBS team. However, according to Bethke, Fedora did nothing to remedy the problem when the OBS team pointed it out.

In a comment on Fedora's GitLab page, Bethke called on the distribution operators to sever all links to OBS Studio and to remove the program's name and logo from the Fedora flatpack, among other things. If the operators do not comply with the demand by Friday, the OBS team will consider legal action, he wrote. This follows a weeks-long dispute over the provision of the faulty Fedora flatpack.

Fedora prioritizes its own flatpak packages

For the provision of programs in Fedora's Software Center, maintainers bundle the individual components and dependencies into their own flatpak packages. This happens even if the developers of a program already provide an official flatpak on Flathub. However, the developers have no influence on Fedora flatpaks. In GNOME Software, Fedora flatpaks are given the highest priority, packages from Flathub or RPM packages are given a lower priority. If users install a program via the Software Center without paying attention to the source, this is usually a Fedora flatpack.

According to Bethke, a new Qt version has been integrated into the Fedora flatpack, which has led to errors. There were also problems with hardware acceleration and the OpenH264 encoder. In some cases, OBS Studio crashed completely after starting, while the official flatpak from the OBS developers ran without any restrictions. Despite notifications to the distribution operators, no joint solution was found. Instead, there was verbal abuse from the Fedora team, so that no rational discussion was possible, explained Bethke. He therefore now regards the Fedora flatpaks as a hostile fork.

Fedora flatpaks mean more work for developers

OBS project leader Bethke had previously asked that the Fedora flatpak of OBS Studio be removed from GNOME Software or that it be made clear that it is a third-party software package. In general, he criticizes that it is difficult for users to see that Fedora flatpacks are not an official source. Accordingly, the developers of the programs are not responsible for problems caused by changes made by the maintainers. Nevertheless, users would approach the members of the software projects in the event of problems, which meant a considerable amount of extra work.

Bathke also questioned whether it was even necessary for maintainers to create new flatpacks for Fedora when working packages are already available on Flathub. In addition to support from the community, Michael Catanzaro, a participant in the Fedora project, is also in favour of corresponding changes and suggests prioritizing packages from Flathub higher than Fedora flatpaks. During installation, official flatpaks from developers would thus be given priority over Fedora's own packages.

(sfe)