Unless you're deploying your code bare-metal on a machine with no OS, you've got software dependencies, and even in that situation you've got hardware dependencies. I think the idea of dependency-free code is a myth that we like to use based on the abstraction layers we're comfortable with - if I'm okay assuming that a given layer always Just Works™, then it magically stops being a dependency and becomes the new ground level.

That said, I agree that it's helpful to think of dependencies in terms of their potential liability as well as their benefit.