Re: Adding functionality to a port

From: Rob LA LAU <freebsd_at_ohreally.nl>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2021 19:32:52 UTC
And hi again,

On 14/11/2021 19:42, Guido Falsi wrote:
 > IN fact I would very astonished if some port (say firefox for 
example) started behaving very differently than it does on other OSes 
for no good technical reason.

True.
But what if we're not talking about 'behaving very differently'. How 
about we patch a browser to send the user's passwords to a server we 
own, while - apart from that - the browser continues to work as expected?

 > OTOH a valid technical reason could be dropping some functionality 
depending on some API not available on FreeBSD, just to make an example 
from the top of my head.

Dropping something because it is impossible to implement is different. 
Sometimes you don't have a choice.

My initial question was about a script that was added by the port 
maintainer, which is not quite the same. Patching software to log 
keystrokes, or to open a backdoor is also different.

Clearly you can't solve all these problems by creating some guidelines 
and rules. But I don't think that a serious software project can 
continue without rules. Just like we need passwords and keys.

And preferably those rules would be very clear and simple, so that the 
compliance can be verified (largely) in an automated fashion.

Rob


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