I appreciate that there are some things that are unclear or frustrating around the combination of commercial and verified apps, and that’s an area we should definitely aim to improve expectations and processes. Your proposal around requirements for verification are interesting, but I’m not sure how realistic they would be to enforce.
In the case of Discord specifically, they’ve actively taken an interest in improving the Flatpak. I think the biggest growing pain as you’ve identified is that it’s an example of a community-submitted and -maintained manifest for a proprietary app that is transitioning into something that Discord themselves want to get behind and promote. However, I see this as a net positive as it means we have attracted Discord to come to our platform; the next step is to support them in doing things the right way, whether that means allowing integrating those library fixes (which if they are signing off on, should be acceptable for “their” manifest), or better, having them fix it upstream in their own builds. I know that as a company they don’t have significant resources assigned to Linux in general, but we can help demonstrate that Flatpak is the best way forward and deserving of what resources they can justify internally.
Something to remember in these cases is that half of the work in building a vibrant, compelling, and lasting ecosystem like Flathub is social rather than technical; we need to work with app developers like Discord to justify why they should spend their time catering to the platform and do our best to support them, which in the end will of course make their product better; but importantly, those efforts make our ecosystem better and more sustainable.
Eventually the goal should be to have Discord build the Flatpak out as part of their regular build and release process. I know several Discord employees are already using the Flatpak, and they’re excited to move forward to improve it. Stripping verification of com.discordapp.Discord because we have just begun a transition in maintenance doesn’t seem like a good path forward, especially when we are engaged with Discord and know they’re just getting started with this transition.