GNOME Software is finally accepting reviews and votes for applications, and the work has been done with the help of an Ubuntu developer, Robert Ancell.

GNOME Software is finally getting this feature, which has been requested over and over by the community. The software center for the GNOME stack has been around for some time, but it lacked in certain areas. The introduction of comments and votes is a really big step forward.

You might want to know why an Ubuntu developer is mixed up with this particular feature, and the answer is quite simple. Canonical announced that it intends to replace Ubuntu Software Center with GNOME Software, but it can't do that unless it can provide the same type of features, including votes and comments.

In fact, the Ubuntu developers promised that the current comments and ratings from Ubuntu Software Center will be moved to the new application, but that will take some doing.

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The developers haven't implemented any kind of restrictions, and the comments and ratings will be anonymous, but that might change if people abuse the feature.

"With a huge amount of help from Robert Ancell for a lot of the foundations for the new code, I’ve pushed a plugin today to allow anonymous rating of applications. If people abuse or spam this I’ll take the feature away until we can have OpenID logins in GNOME Online Accounts, but I’m kind of hoping people won’t be evil," GNOME developer Richard Hughes explained.

The Ubuntu team is probably involved to smoothen up the transition to the new software center, and they are likely going to push a lot more changes upstream once they adopt the new application.

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenia Xerus) is supposed to feature GNOME Software, but it's not clear if they are going to be ready in time for the April launch.