<1/3>

One of the things that is kinda irritating for me, in the "Linux distro model" debate (traditional packages vs immutable+flatpak) is the characterization that some proponents of the latter model make of how stuff gets packaged to "traditional" distros, phrases like:

"The distro grabs all the software they want their users to have access to."

As if distros had some central committee that make those decisions in an arbitrary way. And acted as a middleman that wants to keep control.

<2/3>

Distros have criteria and characteristics. Some distros may commit to only package Free Software, others might not care. Some might want to be rolling release and others stable. But you know what, none of the distros ever kinda hid those criteria. And distros have the right to make those choices, and users have the right to choose a distro that suits them.

<3/3>

But if a package meets the criteria of a distro, them packaging it or not for a distro depends only of a volunteer distro packager wanting to commit volunteer time to package it for that distro.
It does not depend on some “Central Commitee making arbitrary choices” (my choice of words).

<extra>

Also, it's not like users never had the power to bypass a distro and it's criteria, and install from a third party repo (AUR, PPA, copr, pip, npm, cargo), or install the pre the package manually, or build from source.