Comment 242 for bug 173890

> That's fine for development releases, but once the stable release has
> been made, you've got your users to think about. This should _not_ be a
> fatal error. Toss a popup if you must, but leaving the user high and dry
> with respect to flash _every time Macromedia makes a new release_ is
> really bad.

It should be a fatal error as you have no idea what's in that zip file
that you're about to spew on the system. It may or may not work. It
may or may not break things, and it may or may not work in some
browsers. Leaving your users high and dry for a day before the updated
.deb can be put out is better than not getting a chance to test what you
release.

You quite simply can't go down that road of no-testing installations,
even if it inconveniences users.

We all agree that the current solution isn't ideal, but given Adobe's
limitations, it's the best answer. Next step: fix Adobe's limitations
to not exist in their current form.

> What's been really problematic is that the issues have been found in the
> latest release of flash affect a small number of users (and has taken a
> long time to resolve), but the package prevents all users from
> installing it.

I agree on that point: that wasn't done so well. Given that future
upgrades don't break users, the new releases would come out in a matter
of hours after some testing.

But that should be an indication of why testing is necessary: a failed
installation and a message of why it failed is infinitely better than a
successful installation that breaks browsers. Yesterday's Konqueror bug
could be tomorrow's Firefox bug, and you might break Firefox for all
users. If you had all package maintainers with that maverick mentality,
you'd end up with a generally unstable OS.