[Pkg-chromium-maint] Bug#687023: chromium: recommends to "upgrade" gnash to adobe flash

[Helmut Grohne]

Package: chromium
Version: 21.0.1180.89~r154005-1
Severity: wishlist

When trying to view a website that uses flash, there is a yellow bar
saying:

"Adobe Flash Player was blocked because it is out of date." together
with two buttons "Run this time" and "Update plug-in ..."

Now first of all this error message is technically wrong, because there
is no "Adobe Flash Player" installed and thus such a thing cannot be
blocked. Instead gnash is installed.

Second, there is no way to answer this dialog once for all. So for every
website that uses flash, I have to manually agree to run gnash. While
this is a good policy in the presence of outdated flash plugins, it is
not that good in the presence of wrong detection.

Third, when I try to "upgrade" my flash plugin (which is up to date in
terms of unstable), I asked to install a non-free flash plugin by Adobe.
This is a problem in terms of FSF freeness as recommending non-free
software is not permitted in their terms.

So there are multiple ways to solve this issue. The best option may be
to improve the detection of the flash plugin or version. This way
implicitly solves the other sub issues.

Next option would be some way to disable this dialog permanently. In
this case it is still present until being disabled, so the FSF issue
remains.

Another option is to not handle it at all (i.e. wontfix). In the latter
two cases please keep an open bug for the FSF freeness issue and tag it
like #686481. I am not to say that FSF freeness issues must be fixed,
but Zack recommended that we document them.

Helmut