I sense a tension in the community about Canonicals move with snappy. Maybe it is the next Unity, the next Mir or any other thing that seems to come from a companies wish to get control. Maybe.

But here I am, a simple user wanting to use software. In my case Pencil .

It is not in my Ubuntu repository to begin with. So I have to grab the *.deb file myself. Turns out it requires me to use an OLDER version of xulrunner. No idea how to make that happen.

Now I could also:

install it from an *.xpi extension file inside firefox instead of a standalone app
install a signed version of the xpi from mozilla add-ons server
get distro independen binaries
switch my distro from Ubuntu to Arch Linux, NixOS or openSUSE
compile the source code
use OSX binaries
use Windows binaries

My solution isn't even on the long list! I finally got it to run by installing the windows *.exe in wine. Isn't that embarrassing? I don't see what the maintainer role is adding to a solution, it rather seems to add to the problem. The current situation of distribution of binaries hurts freedom0 (run the software) and freedoms 2 & 3 (distribute copies and modified copies).

I see that there may be downsides to snappy and technically and ethically superior "alternatives", but from a software freedom angle I happily wait for whatever comes next - even if it turns out to be snappy.