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<chapter id="chap-AppStream-About">
	<title>About AppStream</title>

	<section id="about-whatis">
		<title>What is AppStream?</title>

		<para>
			AppStream is a cross-distro effort for enhancing the metadata available about software components in the Linux and free-software ecosystem.
			One of the project's goals is to make building software-center applications possible, and make interaction with the package sources of a
			distribution smarter.
			AppStream provides specifications for meta-information which is shipped by upstream projects and can be consumed by other software.
			The meta-information includes data which is interesting to display in software centers and is mainly useful for end-users, as well as descriptions
			about the public interfaces a software component provides, which is mainly useful for developers, 3rd-party software installers and for automatically
			installing missing components on a distribution, for example missing firmware or mimetype-handlers.
		</para>
		<para>
			Distributors provide metadata as well, which describes all components available in a software repository. That data is composed of the upstream-metainfo
			and some other sources.
			AppStream also provides specifications for things like a screenshot-service, application ratings &amp; reviews etc.
		</para>
		<para>
			All parts of AppStream are distribution-agnostic, and therefore it is easily possible to build software management tools with it that work
			on any distribution implementing the AppStream specification.
		</para>

		<section>
			<title>Architecture</title>

			<para>
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		</section>
	</section>

</chapter>
