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Flathub Reverses AI-Generated App Ban
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I think they should just create a policy where unmaintained software gets removed? Or flagged where it's easy to filter out.
Most AI slop just gets abandoned, but a real developer who wants to maintain FOSS software long term with some AI assistance is quite a different thing.
It's especially frustrating because I don't think I've seen a single app store on a distro prominently show when the last update was for a flatpak app. Even flatpaks own website requires scrolling all the way down to the bottom of an app to see that info.
Plus the app store interfaces/apps are terribly slow and bloated, gnome software will sit in the background doing nothing useful and consume 700MB+ of RAM, searching for an app takes forever, and it will lock up sometimes while installing so you can't continue browsing/searching for more apps. I've tried other stores and they all share the same issues for the most part.
Overall the whole situation is just pretty bad and frustrating. I use the terminal for flatpak updates and such, but it's not any good for finding new apps.
An unforeseen consequence from AI Slop is that normal people can now create quite handy software for niche use cases, but the barrier to entry is so low that those people often abandon it quickly too. Rather than security risks, abandonedware is starting to become a bigger problem.
I don't know about other normal people, but I'm certainly actively maintaining my own vibecoded apps as long as it's affordable to do so. By that I mean they give me the niche functionality I want & new features are not added anymore, but if a pillow or pyqt update breaks my app, I may figure out how to fix it even on my own.