Debian maintainer unilaterally strips KeepassXC package of a lot of features

federalreverse-old@feddit.de to Linux@lemmy.ml – 111 points –
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The Debian maintainer is probably a volunteer. Can we not troll people who make Debian and Foss possible?

The KeePassXC people are also volunteers and dealing with the fallout of this decision.

True, but let them settle it without turning a few thousand people against one person.

well it is that one person causing issues

If by issues you mean looking out for people's privacy sure, someone has to.

by issues I mean breaking existing users' workflow, possibly literally locking them out (I personally use a yubikey with my keepass db, for example).

There is a very simple solution he could have done: not rename the existing package. Just give his fork a new name. That's it, everybody is happy.

So yes, he is the one causing issues. Because the issue isn't in the features he removed, but by breaking the users'expectation that the package they installed yesterday, is the same one they're updating today.

To be fair, it looks like the debian maintainer started the unfriendly discourse by calling the work of other FOSS devs "crap"

Everyone needs to chill out, otherwise we have another potential XZ social engineering attack

It would be catastrophic for something like keepass to have a malicious maintainer take over

You have a point to some degree, yet I still think it is defensible to make this post. He majorly altered software

  • downstream
  • against user expectations
  • for somewhat spurious reasons
  • seemingly quite ad-hoc

He then went on to defend that decision in a less-than-graceful way before announcing there will be a second, new package.

But, to make it clear: I certainly don't approve of hate directed toward him and I don't have a personal issue with him.

He is paid by Canonical.

Explains some of the hubris.