I've long been thinking about the economic benefits of aligning desktop Linux distribution models with those of the cloud.
If we do the math, it's clear why the Canonical moved Firefox on snap. It is very expensive. There is no reason to have a maintainer who does nothing but upgrade one Browser on your operating system system. Don't underestimate it, it's a really hard job because it shouldn't be done only for the current release.
The maintainer must backport each new version to all older versions of the operating system.
Those of us using Flathub know the practicality of the new app installation system. That's probably what Red Hat thought too and decided to stop having LibreOffice available through the operating system. Anyone who wants it will find it on Flathub.
I think we will soon see the same movement from other distros. And when I say "other distributions" I don't mean only Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE but also any other.
Will switching to this model cause problems? Probably yes. Will we need to change the way we use these packages? Probably yes.
Does not matter
At the end of the day it doesn't matter. The new model needs fewer people to work on packing packages and they will be able to do more important things.
And when we say important things the real value lies in a well-maintained kernel, a proper graphics stack, the desktop and other relatively basic tools. I 100% respect the work distribution maintainers do, and I know they have an important job. However the landscape needs to be cleaned up: there are huge lists of orphaned packages that everyone pretends don't exist.
Say what you will about Canonical and Red Hat's decision to make this change, but in the end it all comes down to the number of employees and the amount of work required to be competitive in the market.
It will start happening more often and much faster. What's easier in the long run for OS companies is to build the frameworks to do a self-service model. Just like the cloud.
