Calibre phones home without asking, and offers to update itself

Calibre phones home without asking, and offers to update itself

[Mark H Weaver]

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> writes:

> commit e5ffe52cc7d0fa3242e3cd11f63c94deab91a3d5
> Author: Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>
> Date:   Sat Mar 21 20:33:22 2015 +0100
>
>     gnu: calibre: Update to 2.22.0.
>     
>     * gnu/packages/ebook.scm (calibre): Update to 2.22.0.

I haven't yet updated Calibre to 2.22.0, but version 2.21 told me about
the new version the last time I ran it, and offered to update it for me.

This raises a few problems:

* It's automatically phoning home on launch without my consent, which is
  a breach of privacy.

* I don't know exactly what would happen if I let it attempt to update
  itself, but since upstream Calibre includes non-free software (unrar),
  it's probably offering to install non-free software for me.

We should disable this functionality in our Calibre package.

     Mark

Re: Calibre phones home without asking, and offers to update itself

[Ludovic Courtès]

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:

> This raises a few problems:
>
> * It's automatically phoning home on launch without my consent, which is
>   a breach of privacy.
>
> * I don't know exactly what would happen if I let it attempt to update
>   itself, but since upstream Calibre includes non-free software (unrar),
>   it's probably offering to install non-free software for me.
>
> We should disable this functionality in our Calibre package.

Agreed, both should be disabled.

Presumably the other free distros have a patch for that?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Calibre phones home without asking, and offers to update itself

[Andreas Enge]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 06:12:23PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:
> > This raises a few problems:

Indeed, thanks for pointing them out.

> Presumably the other free distros have a patch for that?

Yes, I took a patch from debian and just committed it.

Andreas