Feature request: Add a verification badge to officially mantained Flatpaks

As a long time Linux user, I’m extremely happy with Flatpak and what it means for the Linux ecosystem. Though like many other users, I sometimes struggle to decide whether to install a Flatpak or use the distro package, for the sole reason that a distro package might have been around longer than any non-official Flatpak application, and might be more stable.

Since Flathub is growing every day and getting more official adoption (such as Firefox), this decision would be much easier to make if Flatpaks officially supported by the upstream developer got some kind of verification badge, or a checkmark, or a label somewhere on the store page. You know, like Youtube does, or Twitter, or Snap.

Might seem a minor change, but it’ll help adoption for end users that still do not understand why install a Flatpak version of some app, it gives a lot of legitimacy to both Flathub (hey, this is official, I can trust this!) and to the ecosystem as a whole (hey, Mozilla has an official Flatpak, it’s not just a tech demo!).

Currently AFAIK the only way of making sure a Flatpak is officially mantained is going to the contributors list on the github repo, and checking every single committer if they’re affiliated in any way with the application.

In any case, whether this feature goes through or not, let me give a word of appreciation to all the volunteers that package apps that are not yet supporting Flatpak. Thank you!

(Sorry if this has been discussed already, I could not find the appropriate place to post this.)

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It has been discussed - but it’s never a bad thing to think about and good to have a thread to point to. My personal opinion: This should likely be inserted as a Kudo into the AppStream metadata, likely by the build infra. Possibly controlled via a flathub.json file. Then it’s a matter of supporting that in the various front ends that read app data such as the flathub website, gnome software, kde discover etc. (that last part is non-trivial - flathub could certainly do with website help both on the app user and app developer side of the fence)

Elegance wise I’d probably prefer that apps have to declare that they’re not upstream maintained rather than the other way around but whatever makes it more likely to actually happen, I’m not complaining.

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I’m sorry to revive a year-old thread, but I really want to second @1player’s point here. I’m new to Flatpak, and verified apps would hugely improve my Flathub experience. (Certified unaffiliated status would be just as good.)

This is being discussed in this ticket now by the way for the new flathub website on beta.flathub.org

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I believe there’s now an open PR for this: Implemented a status verification icon by mihaistate03 · Pull Request #734 · flathub/website · GitHub

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Kodi is now verified :slight_smile:

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