Subject: Re: [bug#28004] Chromium 66 + status update

From: Leo Famulari <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 13:00:06 -0400

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 09:30:23PM +0200, Marius Bakke wrote:
> The reason I don't think it's a blocking issue, is because Chromium is
> a massive project and I cannot guarantee that it will never "call
> home".  So while I am intent on fixing the issue, especially since it's
> easy to test (chromium --user-data-dir=/tmp/foo), it's just one of many
> "call home" scenarios/antifeatures.  And if you enable extensions or log
> in all bets are off.  Even Inox, which goes great lengths to de-google
> it, admits that they can't guarantee privacy.

I agree with Marius here.

> Other scenarios include checking for IPv6 availability, testing for
> captive portal, etc.  And I think it even falls back to Google DNS if
> the system resolver is unresponsive.  :-(

I think that handling captive portals and falling back to Google DNS (or
any fallback DNS) are *great* features that address common problems that
most internet users can not work around on their own.

I don't believe these features are forbidden by the FSDG:

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.en.html

Finally, there are several packages that automatically send data out,
even in Guix. This is not a reason to exclude the software from Guix, in
my opinion.