[Owncloud] apps review and categories

[Frank Karlitschek]

Hi,

independent 3rd party apps for ownCloud are getting more and more important for us. I don´t want to ship an ownCloud in a few years that has every features and can do everything including making coffee. So building an app ecosystem around a small ownCloud core is important. Because of that we have to work on the tools to build this ecosystem.

We have now a few improvements in our apps download system starting this evening.

ownCloud versions:
In the past all the ownCloud apps are shown in the ownCloud apps page independently if they are compatible with the current ownCloud version of not. The compatibility check was only executed during installation. We now have categories on apps.owncloud.com where the apps developer can choose the ownCloud version where this app is compatible with. So only the apps that can be installed with the current ownCloud version are shown in the installer.
Currently it is only possible to select one ownCloud version. In the future when we have apps that are compatible with different releases we will add options to select several different versions. But we still have to improve our public api before this really works. :-)


Approval workflow:
It is a security problem if a users installs an untrusted app from apps.owncloud.com that contain a backdoor. In the past we looked at the apps and removed doubtful apps but this is only reactive and not good enough.
After several month of discussions with a lot of people we have now a new process.
Every new or changed app will go into review modus. This means that it is not downloadable from the website or from inside ownCloud. Then someone from the reviewer team has to check the app and approve it. It will be downloadable from the website and will show up in the ownCloud installer.

We are looking for a team of people who want to help with the review and join the apps review team. 
Everybody who wants to help should send me a mail with the apps.owncloud.com username and I will add review/admin permission and subscribe to appsreview at owncloud.org

I hope that we can create a community driven and non evil review process here.

This will be online later today and I hope that this makes sense for everybody.


Frank