> Does anyone want to explain why they think it's acceptable to install software on someone's computer without their affirmative and informed consent

This is not an accurate description of what happened. The information was in the release notes, which are several notches above EULAs for providing informed consent. Secondly, Debian doesn't install sotware, the user does. Debian helpfully provides the list of the packages and the versions before installing. There were no surprises here.

Anyone who wants to know why the real legal world doesn't take tech people seriously, just look at this thread. Y'all live in your own little bubble.

I think you would need to read the GPL to figure out that Debian can do this and you have no recourse (no warranty clause is pretty clear on this).

Explain to me why you think the GPL matters here. Last I checked, the GPL pertains to the program (i.e., apt-get). That is not where the problem is.

Additionally, contracts are not carte blanche to violate criminal law. To the extent that a contract provision would purport to allow violating a criminal law, it would be unenforceable.

> (That being said, I wouldn't mind if Oracle cease-and-desisted them for installing someone else's software using their trademark as the package name.)

You are filled with hatred and rage towards a project and you wish they'd be be sued to death by Oracle because of a minor package naming issue?

Maybe it's time to switch to another distro. In Fedora, trying to install MySQL will install MariaDB, but it is a redirect of sorts, the package is not named MySQL.

> In Fedora, trying to install MySQL will install MariaDB, but it is a redirect of sorts, the package is not named MySQL.

Same as in Debian. mysql-server is a transitional package which ends up installing mariadb-server package at the end.