Re: upcoming gnubg features + button survey

[Russ Allbery]

Isaac Keslassy <isaac@technion.ac.il> writes:

> In addition, (7) gnubg will automatically check is there is a newer
> gnubg version online.

Would it be possible to provide a way for distribution packagers to set
the default for this option to disabled?  Debian has users who are
extremely sensitive to software reporting their activities to anywhere on
the Internet without their explicit consent, so we have a general
distribution policy to not enable checks like this by default.  (There is
unfortunately no way that I know of to check for a newer version without
telling some server that someone just ran gnubg.)

(That reminds me that I think gnubg is probably also using random.org by
default and probably should use /dev/urandom by default instead on
Debian.)

I'd of course document this change and explain how to turn it back on for
anyone who wants it.

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org)             <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>