Users don't know a 'good' PPA from a 'bad' PPA

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

When new users what additional / newer / compiled differently / whatever software, they frequently discover PPAs contain the stuff they want / need. Sometimes PPAs contain old / stale or poor quality packages. The user has no way of knowing a 'good' PPA from a 'bad' PPA.

I'd like to see a summary page on launchpad which 'rates' a PPA. This could be based on metrics such as:-

* Popularity
* Incoming links
* Ratio of build success to build failure
* Karma / reputation / standing of people uploading packages

and so on.

(I am not suggesting the above are the right critera to use to measure a good/bad PPA, merely suggestions to invoke discussion and hopefully further options).

I believe with this ranking the user could make a more measured decision than just "Yay! This has the package I want", especially when the result may be "Oh crap, this PPA broke my system"

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini)]

A thing that could help would be to invite/force PPA owners to rate their own archives. For example, xorg-edgers are very good at this and clearly state that their PPA could be dangerous (i.e. "bad"):

  https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

Maybe Launchpad could provide an additional field "rating" other than the description, showing a big red warning in case the rating is bad. Or better, instead of the rating, Launchpad could ask for the scope of the PPA: testing, production, fun and so on.

I'm in favor of a self-evaluation system instead of a system based on popularity (and similar factors) because while it can be true that a popular PPA is publishing good packages, it's not true that an unpopular PPA provides bad packages.

[David Planella (dpm)]

On 04/02/12 16:48, Alan Pope wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> When new users what additional / newer / compiled differently / whatever
> software, they frequently discover PPAs contain the stuff they want /
> need. Sometimes PPAs contain old / stale or poor quality packages. The
> user has no way of knowing a 'good' PPA from a 'bad' PPA.
>
> I'd like to see a summary page on launchpad which 'rates' a PPA. This
> could be based on metrics such as:-
>
> * Popularity
> * Incoming links
> * Ratio of build success to build failure
> * Karma / reputation / standing of people uploading packages
>
> and so on.
>
> (I am not suggesting the above are the right critera to use to measure a
> good/bad PPA, merely suggestions to invoke discussion and hopefully
> further options).
>
> I believe with this ranking the user could make a more measured decision
> than just "Yay! This has the package I want", especially when the result
> may be "Oh crap, this PPA broke my system"
>

Just a thought, but would it not be easier to promote PPA owners to
submit their apps to the Software Centre through the app developer
process [1], and use the rating system already in place there to tell
the difference between good and bad quality software?

I understand that not all PPAs will make it, but having them in the SC
would make those which make it much more discoverable and provide users
a minimum assurance of quality, all without the need for new infrastructure.

Cheers,
David.

[1] https://myapps.developer.ubuntu.com/

[Wei En (wei2912)]

This is an important issue for the whole Launchpad community. PPAs can easily break a user's system. I'll add my support to this bug.