I am on the side of the consumer, at the same time we need understand the significance of this poll

-Software Installations Consumer Rights-

1. No software shall install any services or files within the OS inner folder structures without these installations be plainly visible and listed to the user. A clear definition of what each service does and locations within your system shall be listed in a plain text file within the main directly of each application

2. System files required by said Application shall also be listed on that same text file in order for the user to understand what system files that application is using. This would allow the user to determine if a conflict could be arising if a file was too old or new.

3. Software licenses and dongles shall be clearly listed as required by the application, if there is online calls to license servers, if the application can be used fully offline or requires on demand connectivity. Local license files shall be listed to the user, this is to allow the user to understand where those license files are and to keep that location clean.


I believe this would solve 90% of all computer software related problems with all OS's.

What do you think?

 

There's often quite a bit of this information in the documentation that comes with whatever software you are purchasing, or in the FAQs on the developers website. If not then the dev 's need to include it, otherwise, 99% of 'consumers' are too lazy to even bother downloading and opening a user guide, they're not going to read a text file telling you what's included.

The amount of people for example that bought the new gen MPC's and then ran to the MPC Forums asking basic shit like 'How do I sample' is fucking ridiculous. You pay almost $2K for a device and cant be bothered to even pick up the Quickstart guide to figure out how to plug it in??

 

As for me, I completely agree with the further pursuit of increased openness regarding software installations. A clear documentation within the app could without any doubt help, however, I doubt that most of users would read it as Slavestate stated. However is a positive sign in the right direction of making users more privy of their machines.

 

Software should just install all files under one folder. But I don't understand the question "
Software Installion Rights and Procedures Agree or Not Agree?
"

 

Most Mac software I install use .PKG installers. I use the app Suspicious Package to look inside them and it shows most of what is the subject of this discussion. Also, with System Integrity Protection enabled (default on MacOS), anything which wants to install to certain system locations is either blocked or must be authorized with an administrator user:password.

It's just about as good as it gets. There can be exceptions, but they are infrequent.

 

I generally agree. I myself would like for there to be a list, available well prior to installation and retainable for future reference, of all the files and their locations where they will be installed. This would provide transparency as to how "invasive" the software is to the system and also where to locate the files for complete uninstallation.

 

The first two points should be handled by the operating system and its security architecture ideally. Mobile operating systems and some flavours of Linux/BSD have gone that route.

Which makes sharing things between programs (say plugins) really difficult, but we can't have nice things anyway.

 

What do I think? I think you underestimate the cleverness of lawyers and the greed of multinational corporations. They really don't care what USERS think of their software, but they will lie as they tell you they are "Enhancing the user experience" by adding telemetry, keylogging, cookies, etc.

its a nice dream, but stillborn. A poll won't change anything. Probably anything less than public trials and executions would have no effect on the software industry.

Good luck and read some history.

 

Thanks for the replies this Poll was about to see who is actually paying attention to not only what they are installing but if they also have an interest in knowing where the list of installed files go into. We know that in Mac OS Apple has gone a bit drastic now with rights and permissions for installation of applications, on Windows 10 and 11 it is heading a bit more into that area but not quite yet due to the demands of lazy IT personal who are basically buying the same machines ( so they don't have to worry about drivers or hardware profiles) in order to work less.

I know my Windows installations since Windows 98 have never been stock I have always had some GUI, file explorer additions to enhance the Windows experience.

Starting with Windows XP ( after my Windows 2000 short time use) Windows became a bit easier to work with, modify for more stability and the tools and utilities available, backward compatibility were pretty much flawless in SP3. However windows EXE setups have always been a major security issue with rights, permissions and of course certified drivers even with Windows 7, Vista, 8 and now 10-11.

I am sure Windows could change in the future where installations have to be certified by Microsoft Servers but we are very far away from that. All I wanted to see is if some people are actually paying attention to their installations, what files are being installed and of course where the locations are of all files.

Considering that all these applications here are either modified, patched or licensed with keygens from outside sources it's become a reality that we have to check what is being installed. There are many tools available to check your installed application and what files were installed but all installations should themselves include a location list of the files that were installed and what files are being shared with the system. This list of files and services installed is more for configuration, backups and system repairs and this would enhance Windows/MacOS or Linux.
in that area.



Thank You.