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Comment by zzzcpan | Hacker News Reader

On my system authors of software can't push updates to me at all. Instead the software is packaged, there is at least some oversight over what is packaged and plenty of user control over packages.

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Yeah, so like the other poster your point reduces to "I trust Fedora to build Mozilla code more than I trust Mozilla to build Mozilla code". Which is nonsensical. At some point you're still trusting "someone" (the scary "someone" from upthread, even!) to give you software, so what's the complaint exactly?

It's not nonsensical. I trust the distribution maintainers to maintain and update a cohesive system composed of thousands of third-party packages. This is entirely different from trusting those thousands of third-party authors to directly update whatever they want on my system whenever they feel like it.

Edit: I'm not implying anything about the capabilities of this preference-updating system; the subject was software updates and who is trusted to deploy them.

That's hyperbolic. Mozilla can't directly update whatever they want via this system. According to the article they can only "change the default value of a preference" within Firefox.

> trusting those thousands of third-party authors to directly update whatever they want on my system

You have completely misunderstood what Normandy does.

How so? Rolling out changes to default settings in an unannounced, automatic way based on users being automatically enrolled in that preference update program, with difficult to understand opt out settings changes required, sounds _absolutely_ like third party authors able to make unrestricted (and unannounced) modifications to my system.

I cannot understand how anyone could think otherwise of Normandy.

The comment I was replying to was about something much broader than Normandy: "trusting [Mozilla] to build Mozilla code" and "to give you software".

> Yeah, so like the other poster your point reduces to "I trust Fedora to build Mozilla code more than I trust Mozilla to build Mozilla code". Which is nonsensical.

I don’t think it is. That way, you have two authorities checking things over instead of just one.

How is that nonsensical? Trusting someone does not imply trusting anybody, and even less everybody.

I trust my mother; it does not mean I trust you, and even less the entire crowd here on HN.

I've stopped using Windows years ago because I didn't trust Microsoft anymore. I'm having minor trust issues with Canonical and Mozilla. I still trust Debian and Arch.

Trust is personal. Hard to get and easy to lose.

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