this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
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They didn't "strip" anything, they've split it into 2 variants, a package without networking features (
-DWITH_XC_NETWORKING=OFF
) and a package with them, because it's considered a privacy issue to have your password manager phone home and fetch favicons and so on. The packages will be calledkeepassxc
andkeepassxc-full
going forward.Afaiu it, he added a second package with (quote) "all the crap" later, after the storm.
And no, it wasn't just the favicons feature that was removed (which like ... is that really such a big privacy issue that you need to remove it from the binary?). Support for Yubikey was removed as well — which is not a privacy issue. The reasoning mentioned by the Debian maintainer is that all of these features might turn out to be security issues in the long run. Thus, in his view, a password manager application must do nothing but provide access to the database within the app.
I find it an interesting example of diverging upstream, maintainer, and user interests in any case.
I find it a lot of unnecessary fuss over unstable. Sid is supposed to make breaking changes, you offer feedback and you follow it through politely. The next Debian stable is one year away, this is not an urgent matter
There are so many people who think sid is a distro when really, as far as the Debian project is concerned, it is a staging ground.
Its also in testing.
Fetching a favicon means raising a network connection with a predictable endpoint. That's already three concerns (four on the modern internet) to handle security-wise, and it's absolutely an unneeded feature. Favicons could just be shipped on something like
keepassxc-data
orkeepassxc-contrib
to handle locally, no need to raise a network call.