You haven't really at all explained any justifiable reason for Canonical to open source it. You still haven't argued at all the resource aspects which are I think the primary motivator here.
Canonical has done this experiment precisely in the past, and we see the results of nobody operating their own launchpad instance. Nobody contributing back. That experience probably trumps all of this goodwill and opinions from the community.
Canonical is more importantly getting users, publishers and numbers behind them. A discussion I remember reading was that every snap has 10x more installs than the corresponding flatpak. That and they have 1st party support from major publishers like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify, Mozilla, Jetbrains, KDE etc....
Those aspects are more important for usability for the average user.
> You haven't really at all explained any justifiable reason for Canonical to open source it.
I've explained why it would be in the users' interest for Canonical to open source the Snap store: it reduces vendor lock-in and allows the users to enjoy the benefits of open source software (the ability to use, study, share, and improve the software with no restrictions).
Whether open sourcing the Snap server benefits Canonical is irrelevant to the users.
No you think it would be in the users' interest but it absolutely isn't. I'm willing to bet money you haven't looked at launchpad's source code at all. Nor have you or anyone else considered operating their own. That is how most of the Ubuntu based distros right now are already getting their software.
If Canonical goes down, a huge part of the usable linux market goes down with it. Possibly Linux Mint too, unless im mistaken.
>vendor lock-in
You are not vendor locked in. You can install flatpak, install via apt, appimages etc... Canonical doesn't ban the removal of snapd from ubuntu distros.
In fact, from a Linux dev I would argue that half the fragmentation for pointless nonsense like packaging and distributions has harmed the community far more. Namely because it's increased the cost of development for these things to a degree that companies won't even bother developing/publishing software on Linux. That has been the primary problem for Linux so far.
Canonical is actually getting first party support from major publishers and people still lampoon them. This includes publishers in the past who never would have considered publishing for Linux before.
> No you think it would be in the users' interest but it absolutely isn't.
If you don't understand the value of free and open source software, you're not obligated to use it. The maintainers of Linux Mint and other Linux distributions do understand, and that is one of the reasons they have rejected Snap.
> I'm willing to bet money you haven't looked at launchpad's source code at all. Nor have you or anyone else considered operating their own.
Your assumption is wrong and you've lost the bet. Additionally, Flatpak is available and Flatpak servers are already being hosted independently:
> You are not vendor locked in. You can install flatpak, install via apt, appimages etc... Canonical doesn't ban the removal of snapd from ubuntu distros.
Canonical has already transformed apt installs of Chromium into Snap installs, which motivated Linux Mint to reject Snap. Vendor lock-in is not black and white. For example, Android users can also install F-Droid or a variety of third-party app stores, but considering Google Play's default status on Android, most users are effectively locked in. The same applies to Canonical's handling of Chromium, and the Linux community is opposing this to discourage Canonical from continuing this dark pattern.
> half the fragmentation for pointless nonsense like packaging and distributions has harmed the community far more
Snap increases the fragmentation, and is more hostile to the FOSS community than all of the other options because its server is closed source.
Linux Mint maintains a Debian derivative (https://linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php) so that they can continue operating should something happen to make the Ubuntu derivative unfeasible.
Also, for what it's worth, I remain entirely unconvinced by your argument that this is fine from a users point of view. If they want to stop the push back, they need to ensure that they are not the only one with the ability to host a Snap store similar to how Flatpak does it. You can claim that this is irrelevant as it won't be used, and I suspect that you're right about that, but they will not be trusted until this happens.
Canonical has done this experiment precisely in the past, and we see the results of nobody operating their own launchpad instance. Nobody contributing back. That experience probably trumps all of this goodwill and opinions from the community.
Canonical is more importantly getting users, publishers and numbers behind them. A discussion I remember reading was that every snap has 10x more installs than the corresponding flatpak. That and they have 1st party support from major publishers like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify, Mozilla, Jetbrains, KDE etc....
Those aspects are more important for usability for the average user.