I don't entirely disagree with this point, but i'd like to point out that running a program as a tarball/appimage downloaded from the dev's website places entire trust in the project's infrastructure, where on the other side of the spectrum distro packaging relies on strong vetting from a distro's community.

Flatpak/snap is somewhere in between where on the main repos (eg. flathub.org) anyone can publish a package for anything without being affiliated with upstream. It incentivizes users to just search for the app name and download whatever comes up as a result. That's a pattern we've known to be broken for years: from Windows users downloading the first link Google suggests (usually a sponsored link bundled with spyware/adware) to Android users downloading anything the Play Store suggests (usually spyware, see how many flashlight apps there are and what permissions they require). F-Droid in the Android ecosystem strikes a balance because there is strong community vetting for all packages published, so it's like a distro-agnostic repository following the distro packaging threat model.

I believe there are ways to mitigate those issues (eg. namespace enforcement on flatpak) but i don't think downplaying them is doing any good.

You are right. But with the marketing of them with sandboxing and whatnot, they create the impression and illusion that it is safe. Cos most of them install it from Flathub or Snapcraft. The assumption is that they go through all of it and that it is safe. Just like Play store and App store. I am pretty sure Flatpak folks now this. It is like... we won't lie. But we are not also gonna tell the truth.

To make things worse, Flathub changed the way they display "Publisher" field for a flatpak. Which says whether a package was published by Flathub maintainers, Upstream developer or somebody else in Flathub. Now instead of saying who, they just say a "See details" link under Publisher field in flathub.org for a flatpak. That link which in turn directs me to a github page and I am still unsure who the hell uploaded that flatpak.

Before, they used to say Upstream developer's name or say "Flathub maintainers" which means Flathub team uploaded the flatpak making it easier verify who uploaded the flatpak. But now it is making it more difficult. This has been the most pissing thing about Flatpak other than the security issues and problems which keeps coming up about Flathub every now and then. Why would you change something that is so crucial when it is working?

Cos now, I could package a software which is not in Flathub and it would just say "See details" instead of my name. This provides the illusion of trust. Cos if it were to show my name there, more people would've been like.. who the hell is this guy and do a check on me (I used to do that). But now, If I could slip through Flathub checks and provide malicious flatpak, majority of the folks will still install cos most of them are using Flatpak for convenience. Not security and performance.

Want proof? Just scroll up and you will see someone saying he don't care even though agrees to the things in the blog post. He just don't care. :shrug:

I was thinking about this the other day and a wasteful solution to the packaging problem in open source is the decentralized build solution on a blockchain like platform. Either with PoW or PoS. In PoS, a node builds the code pulled from source control, multiple other nodes validate the build and its hash and add to the blockchain and to the repository. Now the builds are relatively trustable. Of course need to figure out an incentive structure for miners/validators to do this expensive work.