> As opposed to what?
Opposed to distributions providing targeted updates to each package.
> Dynamic linking does not solve this problem, contrary to popular belief.
On the contrary it provably works very well for distributions.
>>- Long term maintenability: your desktop becomes a random mashup of applications with increasing complexity that you have to maintain yourself.
>Again, as opposed to what?
Opposed to distributions that do the huge work of packaging, testing, backporting etc.
>>- Licensing issues: distros review licenses (and find plenty of copyright violations while doing so). A flatpak puts you or your company at risk.
>Sounds like a good way for a proprietary software to be distributed...
This is unrelated to the lack of licensing review.
>>- Impact on the ecosystem: the more users switch to opaque blobs the less testing and review is done for proper packages. The whole ecosystem become more vulnerable to supply chain attacks.
>I don't see how one follows the other.
Supply chain attacks are strongly mitigated by maintainers doing vetting and packaging, and by distribution doing release freezing.
