The latest discussion about Application Review Board has been very much insightful. The discussion took place on ubuntu-devel mailing list. Here are a bit of extra information which I gained from the discussion. This information is purely based on what people posted there and not my personal opinions.

The original post by Jono is here. Use Next and Previous to navigate.

The Pain point

Till now getting you application in the repositories was a tedious work. Most of the community packages reside in Universe repository. What if some application developer wants to target a version of Ubuntu which has already been released. Currenlty the only way is via third party repositories or via Launchpad PPA(even PPAs are third party repositories). Adding a new repository is not an easy work for normal users who just want things to work.

Incentive

This new process will be easier to market for the developers who want to target this platform. The developer spends most of his time developing the application rather than spending time on getting his/word work to the repositories.

Restrictions and Limitations

Applications for which the underlying libraries needs to be changed are not eligible for inclusion. During UDS these applications were called the “lead node” applications

Also it would be tough to review medium and large size applications. Simple applications can get through the process in less time.

These apps are not a part of Ubuntu and not a part of Official repositories. This is a method to get third party apps available in Ubuntu with least headache.

Packaging Responsibility

It’s the developer’s responsibility to get the apps packaged for each release and submit it for review. Every release won’t pick up these package from the previous release to avoid “dead package” dumping.

The application developer needs to package his application in a PPA, which will be tested and reviewed by the board. When passed it would be added in the Software Center. Using Quickly, it is even easier to get the apps in the PPA

Backports

This is different from backports since the definition of “backports” means that the package is available for next development release which is then made available in the current release.