Stemming from the ongoing discussion surrounding the legal dispute surrounding Fedora's OBSStudio Flatpak package and the priority of Flatpaks in the GNOME Software App Center/Store, the community has raised the issue of the future of RPM support in GNOME Software.

One user suggested that RPM package support be completely separated/removed from GNOME software in favor of promoting Flatpaks:

Since everyone agrees that RPM should be at the bottom of the priority list, how about completely decoupling (removing) RPM from GNOME software?

This may seem like a step back, but it will make GNOME software more consistent between workstations and Silverblue, and support Fedora's goal of making Flatpaks the primary packaging option.

This would make RPM an option for more advanced users, who seem to prefer the powerful dnf to GNOME software anyway.

It would also be easier to prioritize package sources if there were no RPMs in GNOME Software: either FedoraCore->FlathubVerified (or MaybeSafe)->FedoraExtended->FlathubExtended or similar.

The response was somewhat surprising:

Eliminating RPM applications is a long-term goal of mine, but I'm not sure how quickly we can get there.

This answer comes from Michael Catanzaro, an engineer on the Red Hat Desktop team who is a member of the Fedora Workstation working group and a member of the GNOME release team.

This means that the long-term goal of GNOME Software is to get rid of RPM packaging integration and focus on Flatpaks. We will also need to continue to see how long it takes for GNOME Software to get rid of RPM support.

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