Comment 2 for bug 630731

If I read it correctly, the branch changes the two filter options to three: "All software", "Free Software", and "Canonical-Maintained Software". I see three issues with this.

First, we're in an environment where software developers have muddled the meaning of "free". USC offers both commercial and non-commercial software, and "free" is the only reasonable word to use for software where the price is zero. So in USC, to be as clear as possible, we use "free" only for zero price, and "open source" for the other meaning. I can imagine someone wanting to show only zero-price software, and that is what I assumed your code did -- right up until I got to line 420 of the diff and saw the 'if self.distro.get_license_text(component) != "Open source"'.

The second issue is that however the option was worded, it might imply that Canonical-Maintained Software is not open source, when almost all of it is (all except "restricted"). I'm not sure how to fix this, or whether I'm worrying over nothing. Any ideas?

Third, for any configuration option that exists, some proportion of people will twiddle it by mistake. Maybe their mouse slips while they're trying to do something else. Or maybe they try it just to experiment, and it seems to do nothing, so they don't bother to switch back. Almost all software available in USC currently is open source, so choosing the "Open Source" option wouldn't appear to do anything initially, but days or weeks later people would wonder why (for example) they couldn't see Beep. That doesn't mean the option shouldn't exist, but it does mean it should be obvious how to untwiddle it *from* the places where you're likely to fail because you twiddled it. For example, from search results. So, this needs a little more design work.