[Pkg-chromium-maint] sane chromium default flags - include --enable-remote-extensions [and 1 more messages]

[Ian Jackson]

Sven Hoexter writes ("sane chromium default flags - include --enable-remote-extensions"):
> I've found the issue to be tracked in https://bugs.debian.org/851927

I found that bug rather unenlightening TBH.

Marco d'Itri writes ("Re: sane chromium default flags - include --enable-remote-extensions"):
> Users expect their browser to update the extensions that they have 
> installed themselves, so the excuse about "unrequested network 
> connections" looks like just an ideological decision.

I think if the user does not install extensions[1], Chromium should
not phone home.  Do you agree ?

If the user does install extensions from the upstream extension
repositories, then Chromium must phone home to check for updates to
those extensions.  (This is surely necessary to get security updates
to the extensions.)

[1] Extensions provided as Debian packages do not count, as they
should be updated via apt.  So whatever mechanism can't simply ask
"are there any extensions?"; it has to somehow ask "are there any
extensions we need to phone home about?"

It seems likely to me that this is a bug, not some kind of
"ideological mistake".  Chromium is a complicated program and it's
full of spying stuff.  Probably someone completely disabled this
particular phone-home without thinking through all the implications.
Or perhaps making the extensions phone-home conditional is hard.

Does that make sense ?

Ian.