YunoHost's policy regarding the apps included in the official catalog

License

The rule of thumb is that we only include software licensed under a free-software license in the official app catalog.

As YunoHost grew, some gray area cases appeared with software that would be relevant for YunoHost's goal and match its spirit, while not being strictly-speaking free-software. These applications may be:

• promoting the use of centralized services, though precisely to avoid their direct usage ;
• relying on non-free dependencies or assets ;
• released under "new" post-open-source or ethical-yet-not-free licenses such as the ACSL, the HL3 or the CoopCycle License ;
• released under "open-core" models, trademark clauses, or business-related license clauses (such as the BSL) which are meant to ensure the project's sustainability while remaining ethical.

While we believe free software principles are an essential footstep towards YunoHost's goal, we believe they are a means and not an end. We reject the purist vision according to which software is either free or proprietary, and the flawed premise that technology is fundamentally neutral. We believe that ethical software and technology can and should exist beyond the definition of free software layed 40 years ago (see also: Freedom isn't Free and Post-Open Source).

The project therefore allows the inclusion inside the official app catalog, on a case-by-case basis, of apps which does not qualify as "free software", yet considered to be ethical and worthy of interest for YunoHost's goal. Such apps are tagged in the catalog, such that an explicit message displayed before their installation.

If you notice an app is missing such a tag/disclaimer, feel free to open a discussion or pull requet on the app catalog.

If you run YunoHost for your business, you are responsible for doing your due diligence by checking the licenses of the software you want to install on your server.

Nature of the app

In addition, the YunoHost team decided to not include apps in the official catalog if they:

• are overly complex to deploy or resource-hungry compared to their features ;
• only apply to super niche use cases ;
• promote cryptocurrencies ;
• promote AI for purposes deemed futile compared to the ecological and sociological costs involved behind the scenes ;
• promote shady activities such as tracking/stalking people.

The team may make exceptions to these criteria on a case-by-case basis, on its own volition. The team may also amend this list with other criteria in the future.

What to do if you're not happy with these criterias

These editorial choices do not mean that apps infringing them cannot be created, merely that they won't be included in the official catalog. You are free to:

• Develop your own application packages (though support may be limited due to aforementioned criteria)
• Manually install any application by using yunohost app install <url_to_git_repo_ynh>
• Create and add a custom catalog source within /etc/yunohost/apps_catalog.yml