Rules

Four of them. Breaking one gets a submission rejected, whatever else is right about it.

On this page

This page is a stub.
Contributions to this page are welcome!

MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD and SHOULD NOT carry the meanings given in RFC 2119. A MUST is checked, and a submission that fails one is refused. A SHOULD is checked too, but a reason written into the pull request can carry it.

This page is the list a submission is measured against, and nothing more. Guidelines has the reasoning, the examples and the cases people argue about.

1. No AI Slop

  • You MUST NOT submit an app produced primarily by AI without meaningful human development or review.
  • You MUST tick the AI disclosure on the pull request template, honestly.
  • You MUST have run the app on a TV, and MUST name the model and webOS release you ran it on. A browser or an emulator alone does not count.
  • You MUST be able to say why the code is written the way it is.
  • You SHOULD submit one app rather than a dozen reskins of one.
  • The icon and the description SHOULD be your own work.

See No AI Slop for where the line falls.

2. No Piracy

  • Your app MUST NOT break DRM, and MUST NOT help anyone else break it.
  • Your app MUST NOT ship copyrighted content, and MUST NOT fetch it for the viewer.
  • An emulator MAY be listed on its own, and MUST NOT carry ROMs.
  • A media player MAY play what the viewer already has, and MAY carry a library that is public domain or openly licensed. Anything else, it MUST NOT.
  • A client for a service MUST use the viewer's own account, and MUST NOT work around either the account or the DRM.

See No Piracy for how this reads per kind of app.

3. Respect the Hardware

  • Your app SHOULD be something somebody uses from a sofa with a remote in hand.
  • There is no uninstall hook, so anything you write outside your own container outlives the app. It MUST be harmless once the app is gone.
  • You MUST NOT write to the system partitions.
  • A startup script MUST be symlinked rather than copied.
  • A startup script MUST check that a target exists before acting on it, and MUST stop if it does not.
  • A startup script SHOULD write what it did to a file under /var/lib/webosbrew/.

See Respect the Hardware for why a rooted app is held to more than a sandboxed one.

4. Honour the Licence

  • You MUST follow the licence of any project you port, keep its copyright notices and keep its licence file.
  • You MUST publish your changes where the licence asks for them.
  • A main package MUST carry a sourceUrl that points at a publicly reachable repository.
  • A main package SHOULD carry a licence a machine can identify.
  • You MUST NOT mark a package non-free to withhold source you are obliged to publish.

See Honour the Licence for what pool declares.

Report an Inappropriate Application

If a listed app breaks any of these, open an issue and pick the template that fits.

Ask for one to be removed when it:

  • Does not work as listed. It fails on the models and releases the listing itself claims to support, rather than on hardware nobody promised.
  • Harms the TV. It crashes the set, leaves it unstable, or takes a reset to undo.
  • Is low quality throughout. A generated icon, a generated blurb and nothing behind them. AI slop is the usual shape of it, though it is the result that decides, not the tool.
  • Serves piracy. Free access to films, television, or anything else people normally pay for.

Say which app it is, what you did, and what happened. A report that names the model and the webOS release is one somebody can act on.

Next Guidelines