Re: Are plasmoids expected to be good citizens

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Re: Are plasmoids expected to be good citizens
by Anon on Monday 24/Mar/2008, @11:03

Native code apps will always have to be either compiled from source (a power-user task), obtained from distro packages, etc - in other words, Plasma does *not* lower the barrier to entry of getting native code onto the users desktop. It is precisely as much of an increased security risk as Kicker applets were i.e. "barely at all".

Non-native code - which will hopefully form the bulk of 3rd party plasmoids - can, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, be tightly sandboxed so that it can do no harm.

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Re: Are plasmoids expected to be good citizens
by Sebastian Sauer on Monday 24/Mar/2008, @13:05

> in other words, Plasma does *not* lower the barrier to entry of getting native code onto the users desktop

It does. Security is not related here but things like a) the time needed to look at how it should be done and b) the time needed to get it working. Plasma helps with a) by providing good, clean and small interfaces Plasmoids need to implement and helps with b) by providing a fast way to test your code and cause of a) it's also not needed to write tons of code to get just something working.

All in all, it does help to lower the barrier to entry. If we look at scripting code aka Plasoids written or extended with scripts, then there is also no connection between security and barrier since it's not the main goal of most scripting languages to provide a secure sandbox but to get a solution out faster (aka without learning pointer-logic, without compiling, without being such static limited, etc.) an that's exactly what they (may) do in plasma as well :)

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Re: Are plasmoids expected to be good citizens
by Sebastian Sauer on Monday 24/Mar/2008, @13:09

> in other words, Plasma does *not* lower the barrier to entry of getting native code onto the users desktop

It does. Security is not related here but things like a) the time needed to look at how it should be done and b) the time needed to get it working. Plasma helps with a) by providing good, clean and small interfaces Plasmoids can implement and helps with b) by providing a fast way to test your code and get it working and cause of a) the task shouldn't be that complex => lesser code needed to get the job done.

All in all, it does help to lower the barrier to entry. If we look at scripting code aka Plasmoids written or extended with scripts, then there is also no connection between security and entry-barrier since it's not the main goal of most scripting languages to provide a secure sandbox but to get a solution out faster (aka without learning pointer-logic, without compiling, without being such static limited, etc.) an that's exactly what they (may) do in plasma as well. Security, as in Plasmoids coming from untrusted sources, is only related for the deployment.

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