Draft privilege escalation policy for comments

[Richard Hughes]

On 30 January 2010 07:33, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> The current PackageKit policy in F12 updates still allows upgrading (as
> opposed to installing or removing, not sure about downgrading, does
> PackageKit even support that?)

No, PackageKit won't let you downgrade a package.

> Is the bureaucracy in this section really necessary? AFAICT what was missing
> when the F12 PackageKit change was made was the informative part of the
> proposal, the maintainer just didn't know what he should be allowing and
> what not. I don't think the enforcement part is really needed, maintainers
> should be able to get it right on their own given the detailed list of evil
> things to avoid which the proposal provides and I haven't seen any evidence
> as to the contrary (again, the PackageKit example is not applicable because
> the PackageKit maintainer did NOT have such a list to go by when he made his
> change; there's no reason to believe he'd have made that change in spite of
> it).

Sure, if there was a policy document I would have never made the
Fedora change in the first place. I still think the original change
(to make signed packages installable by the local console user install
without a password) is the "right" upstream policy, but I will of
course ensure all my packages agree with whatever Fedora policy is
decreed. Luckily, with the new user account editor planned for F13, a
lot of these PackageKit security policy choices can be made more
intuitive.

Richard.