[mnau]

91_remove_version_upgrade_warnings.patch is the one for asthetic reasons.

Debian keeps ancient versions that have many fixed bugs. Upstream maintainer has to deal with fallout of bug reports of obsolete version. To mitigate his workload, he added obsolete version warning. Debian removed it.

[quietbritishjim]

I'll admit that I haven't inspected the patch, but how could that warning possibly work without checking version information somewhere on the internet? That was listed in OP.

[sneak]

IIRC it just hardcodes the release date and complains if it is more than 2 or 3 years later.

It’s somewhat reasonable. I agree Debian should patch out phone-home and autoupdate (aka developer RCE). They should have left the xscreensaver local-only warning in, though. It is not a privacy or system integrity issue.

jwz however is also off the rails with entitlement.

They’re both wrong.

[mschuster91]

> jwz however is also off the rails with entitlement.

Always remember to not link to his site from HN because you'll get a testicle NSFW image when you click on a link to his site from HN. dang used to have rel=noreferrer on outgoing links, but that led to even more drama with other people...

Some people in the FOSS scene just love to stir drama, and jwz is far from the only one. Another person with such issues IMHO is the systemd crowd, although in this case ... IMHO it's excusable to a degree, as they're trying to solve real problems that make life difficult for everyone.

[esperent]

> Always remember to not link to his site from HN because you'll get a testicle NSFW image

What's his reason for targeting HN users this way?

[mschuster91]

The testicle speaks for itself [1]. He has held a serious political grudge against VC way over a decade back [2], the earliest mention of the JWZ testicles appearing on HN that I could find is over 9 years old [3].

[1] NSFW https://imgur.com/32R3qLv

[2] (Redirects to NSFW, so open in incognito or you'll get the testicles) https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-s...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10804953

[esperent]

> The testicle speaks for itself

It really doesn't. It says he hates users from HN but it says nothing about why. Is it really just that he doesn't like the traffic?

If it's because he has a grudge against VCs, which is more understandable, why is he taking it out on HN users?

[mnau]

People unfamiliar with code base can easily screw it, here is SimplePie example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44061563

I don't think that approach is reasonable. When you are effectively making a fork, don't freeload on existing project name and burden him with problems you cause.