Re: Phoning home
On Mon, 2008-02-25 at 10:16 +0100, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote:
> Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> > On su, 2008-02-24 at 16:43 -0600, Raphael Geissert wrote:
> >> * The package/software SHOULD offer a way to disable the 'phoning home' code
> >> if it contains such kind of 'feature'.
> >
> > Speaking as a human being, I would suggest that Debian policy should be
> > that all "phoning home" MUST be enabled explicitly, and MUST be turned
> > off by default.
>
> No, I prefer the SHOULD form, because it permit the
> right thing to be done, giving the debian developer
> the freedom (and burden) to check what it is bad, and
> what it is acceptable.
The developer *already* has the freedom. No policy change is necessary
for that. What we had here was a developer who thought that upstream
had some kind of right to not have a change made unless there was a
"clear policy". And that kind of thinking is destructive.
> Think about:
> apt
> ntpdate
> clamav-freshclam
> dcc-client
> icewasel
> popularity-contest
> and IIRC bind will check the root zone.
Except popularity contest, I'm pretty sure none of this are actually
"phone home" cases. ntpdate must contact servers *in order to do its
job*, likewise for apt. This is not true for the case we are talking
about.
Thomas
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