Isn't that one a little hard to manage? In Apple's view, the files modified by themes are system files. Are you going to take all those out back? 🙂

In regards to the main post, yes. Absolutely. I 100% agree. It annoys me daily to tap on an app in Cydia and have it just sit there for ages. There isn't even a little spinny thing telling me that it's still loading the description details. Then when it finally loads, I see nothing but a massive ugly ad covering the ENTIRE screen. I scroll down and who knows what I'm actually going to get. I can't stand devs that don't give changelogs. I hate not getting screenshots. Frankly, I hate that developers do have so much control. Descriptions are many times misleading or not detailed enough to actually explain what exactly you're getting. Screenshots are many times not available. For free apps, that's fine, but it amazes me how many of the paid Cydia apps are that way. To be honest, that kind of experience makes me almost understand why the crack scene is as big as it is. I would be pissed off if I bought some of these apps being sold on Cydia for $5+ that are absolute garbage and don't even do what the description leads you to believe they do. I'm a movie and TV show thief, but I'm proud to say I still pay for every one of my iPhone apps. I, in no way, condone the use of pirated apps, but with such a terrible system currently in place I can start to see why it's so big.

I do greatly appreciate the work Saurik and the repo maintainers have done. Obviously, it's better than nothing. But yes, both the App Store and Cydia are in desperate need of some very big changes. I understand everybody wants to keep everything open and give developers the freedom to do what they like, but it makes for a very poor user experience. Things can remain open and free, even if the major repos (BigBoss, ModMyi, etc.) are more strict and stop allowing everything and anything. Anybody in the world is free to run their own repo if they want their app description to be annoying, unorganized, misleading, etc. The big boys should have some standards.

Under no circumstances should a package replace or directly modify any files that belong to the operating system.

That is one steadfast rule – any packages found doing so will be taken out back and shot; they cause WAY too many problems.

I mention the firmware thing because earlier in the year I installed an app for the iPhone 3G (OS 3.0) which was supposed to add 3Gs camera tap to zoom/focus features and my camera and photo apps stopped working. Turned out the app required 3.1 to use and replaced my camera files. Many people over at ModMyi did the same and had to restore. This could have been avoided if the app had to let the user know what firmware it worked on.