Likewise, I am a developer, a user, and I have fond memories of the old days of 2003 when I could download and run whatever I wanted on my Mac without any fear or security concerns.
Unfortunately, that world is no longer the one we live in.
One of the things I’ve learned about software security is the need to minimise the attack surface of your systems — don’t keep a database running on your web server unless you actually need it, don’t keep ports open unless they’re important, don’t install packages or dependencies you can do without — because everything has the potential for a zero-day exploit. Likewise for my own productive output: the only code guaranteed to be bug free is the absence of code.
For any computer not attached to the public internet, I agree that you should be free to run whatever you want. For anything networked? That’s anarchy, and although I would like the freedom of anarchy I experienced in 2003, unfortunately I don’t like the consequences of everyone else having the freedoms of anarchy in 2020.
I don’t have any fun, easy, side-effect free, solutions.
