You're right, in a way. What I described would be a reality under a package manager with curated repositories, if I sourced all my software from there.
My wish came from the opposite end - I have all this software on my devices that's sourced from a lot of different places, and some of the software on my PC has built-in auto-update that's independent of the original installation method. What I want is a curation add-on - a single (at least per-device) component that would intercept all automatic updates of everything, coupled with a database (the service part) that could tell me roughly what the update contains, and flag anything problematic (telemetry, ads, feature removals, performance degradation, ...).
Your reply made me realize two things:
1. I used to hate default package sources on Debian for shipping a small selection of outdated software. I formed this impression back when I was young and naïve, and didn't question it since. But now I can see the value in having actual humans curate the software. I need to get out of the habit of adding random sources and PPAs just for the sake of having everything bleeding edge.
2. I'm really mostly pissed about this on behalf of other people. I've learned to manage my devices - mostly by being very selective about the software I run. Most people I know in the meatspace don't have the necessary experience and time, and helping everyone individually doesn't scale.
My wish came from the opposite end - I have all this software on my devices that's sourced from a lot of different places, and some of the software on my PC has built-in auto-update that's independent of the original installation method. What I want is a curation add-on - a single (at least per-device) component that would intercept all automatic updates of everything, coupled with a database (the service part) that could tell me roughly what the update contains, and flag anything problematic (telemetry, ads, feature removals, performance degradation, ...).
Your reply made me realize two things:
1. I used to hate default package sources on Debian for shipping a small selection of outdated software. I formed this impression back when I was young and naïve, and didn't question it since. But now I can see the value in having actual humans curate the software. I need to get out of the habit of adding random sources and PPAs just for the sake of having everything bleeding edge.
2. I'm really mostly pissed about this on behalf of other people. I've learned to manage my devices - mostly by being very selective about the software I run. Most people I know in the meatspace don't have the necessary experience and time, and helping everyone individually doesn't scale.