These examples are not in the browser context at all.

The package repo one is. You should be able to browse it over HTTP, just as they also used to be browsable via Internet Explorer's FTP mode.

Parent post didn't expliticly ask for browser context only.

Why? What benefit is there to browsing a package repo over plain http when https is available?

Mitm attacks seem incredibly dangerous in a package repo. Signing only gets you so far - and they probably don’t protect you from downgrade attacks.

Whether or not there is a benefit should be a judgement left up to the user.

There's no benefit to saving a file on a floppy disk, but if I tell my computer to copy a file to my floppy drive, I don't expect it to say "No, can't do that. You should be using a USB flash drive--they're better in all ways!"

I'm sure there's plenty of good reasons for wanting to use unencrypted HTTP, just like there's probably plenty of reasons to enjoy using floppy disks.

But I'm asking you: Why do you want to use unencrypted HTTP? Surely there must be some reason you want to do that, right? You (and others) clearly care a lot about this. I'm sure you're not an idiot. Help me understand your point of view here?

In this specific case, it's a crappy IoT device supporting only TLS 1.1. So when my browsers "helpfully" redirect me from the http:// interface to the https:// interface, they then "helpfully" refuse to work because TLS 1.1 is icky and end-of-life and browsers have decided that means "tell the user to fuck off."

At the end of the day, I worked around all of this browser helpfulness by using Firefox and re-enabling TLS 1.1 in Firefox's settings. I never actually managed to force any browser to use http:// despite trying many proposed solutions in this thread and on the web.

But all that aside, it doesn't really matter why I want to use unencrypted HTTP. I am commanding my computer to do it, and I expect it to carry out my command. My computer is a tool. It should do what I want it to do, even if that might hurt me. If I type in sudo rm -rf /usr, I expect it to do what I tell it to do. Not ask "Why do you want to do that?"