Debian status is inaccurate, it is actually something like "Invalid" /
"Wontfix", not "Fix Released".

I do think this is a valid bug. The "proper" solution probably is:
Release an updated pepperflashplugin-nonfree package every time Google
updates the flash plugin. The package should contain a checksum of the
current .so file and download&extract&check&install the library on
installation. (This will only work if old chrome download files are
available even after a new version is released… otherwise, the package
installation will fail as soon as a new chrome version is released. In
that case, the checksum verification should be skipped, but still: a new
debian package should released every time flash gets updated.)

The Debian wiki says that this is not suitable for Debian because it's
apparently difficult to get security updates into stable if they are not
100% security related. So I wonder why there's no special exception for
closed-source software in Debian where patching ONLY security issues is
simply not possible… It really sounds stupid.

> But that would reopen the debate on how to get the updated Debian package
> in stable in a user friendly way and sufficiently fast. Note that the Debian
> package would pull in a combination of feature updates and security fixes in a
> new upstream release of closed-source software, which is somewhat difficult
> for Debian procedures to install quickly in stable. 

So Debian apparently prefers having really dangerous outdated versions
of flash installed on their users' systems (because ~~nobody knows about
update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree) instead of pushing one isolated
closed-source software package (that might do a little more than fixing
security issues) into stable.

The debian process is not very well suited for closed-source software. I
wonder if Ubuntu would be willing to improve this. It probably depends
on the number of Chromium users, most of which probably use pepperflash-
plugin-nonfree without knowing about the risk for their system when
installing & forgetting about that package.

So … please: Either drop the pepperflash package and recommend upstream
chrome for users that need flash, or fix the package.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1312219

Title:
  Plugin needs to update automatically

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