Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open issues and couldn't find a duplicate

What?

Following feedback from end users around concerns related to channels with terms of services and other legal restrictions, we can improve conda to handle channel management a little better by default. The goal of this initiative is to work on a consistent resolution to user experience issues, as well as overcoming some tech debt in conda's code base.

Why?

Various stakeholders in the conda ecosystem have reported concerns about the pre-configuration of conda to favor channels from Anaconda Inc. While distributions like miniforge come pre-configured for conda-forge, conda itself hard-codes Anaconda Inc channels within its code base, due to the way conda was incubated historically.

Conda has been a full Open-Source project with a permissive license and governed by a steering council per its governance policy for a while now. As such, this pre-configuration has detrimental effects on the trust and reputation of the conda OSS project among conda users that aren't Anaconda Inc customers.

User impact

Less confusing way of handling channels, no accidental use of an unwanted channel, conda is more agnostic to how channels are run etc.

Goals

• user focus, reduce legal risks for end users
• overcome historic decisions on how conda is configured, pay down tech-debt

Tasks

• conda config --append injects the default value too (e.g. --append channels conda-forge results in channels: [conda-forge, defaults] #12356
• Global channel denylist #14176
• Do not populate channels (or defaults) by default #14178
• Review docs for cases of inaccurate or outdated information related to agnostic channel management #14225
• https://github.com/anaconda-distribution/installers/issues/794
• Deprecate the restore_free_channel configuration option. #14231
• Add references to miniforge in Readme and update links to miniforge in documentation. #14226
• Warn of potential incurred costs with non-free channels #14249
• Support multiple root authorities for signed package verification #13219
• More specific doc for the warning "Adding 'defaults' to channel list implicitly is deprecated" #14393

This epic is blocked by:

This epic blocks: