AppStream Ideas and Thoughts

Éric Araujo merwok at netwok.org
Wed Feb 16 10:04:39 PST 2011


>>>> - make sure each package is free software;
>>> This can be easily seen from the package installation window?
>> Provided you trust the author.  There have been many cases where a
>> package proved to contain non-free parts, with or without knowledge of
>> the author.
> 
> Yet you're trusting the author when you install the application onto
> your system?  To be perfectly honest, if you can't trust the author to
> know his own source code (whether it contains non-free components or
> not), can you trust him that the code is safe to run your machine in
> the first place?  :)

That’s my point: I don’t install software that’s not provided by Debian
unless I really need it and I can review the code or trust the people
behind the project :)

Even when I trust that a piece of software won’t rm -rf my $HOME,
assessing freeness is a specialized skill; it has happened not a few
times that existing code or data files with unclear or non-free status
have been included in a free software project.  Debian developers and
FTP masters do have the expertise, time and willingness to look into
each file to make sure the project is indeed free, and for that, users
like me are extremely thankful.

Regards


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