Comment by anonymars
6 months ago
False dichotomy.
Why should I expect that merely installing a dictionary will silently opt me in to sending everything in my clipboard to some third party?
You don't need some strawman tyrant to want it to require a user opt-in if that's what you really want to do
You can expect that any software might do anything, either because of a bug or because it's intentional, and you won't know until you see it happen. It's why the major FOSS licenses say things like THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
You can want software to be well behaved, and in most cases it is. But if you want some level of assurance that the software is behaved as you'd like it, some requirement in law that the software is not allowed to exist unless it meets your requirements, or the platform it runs on is neutered so it literally can't do the thing you don't want it to do -- that's where the tyrant comes in.
Again, false dichotomy. If Debian's maintainers don't put things in the package manager with dodgy behavior, that's not a walled garden like iOS
Not having to check your cereal for razor blades is also a freedom
You're asking Debian to check out all aspects of a program and hold them liable if it does something you don't like, or their volunteers does something you don't like.
That's not what Debian is doing. Debian is asking for volunteers to package the world's free software, also written by volunteers. They have their own checklists, your "dodgy behaviour" concerns aren't on it. Confirming the software meets your expectations depends on you evaluating it. If it doesn't, you can then volunteer your time to write them a bug report, which they might or might not accept and fix.
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