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@h3artbl33d Man, it takes like a minute to check that the first argument doesn't apply any more. GNOME Software warns you that Octave has full access to your home. And if you don't like it, you can disable the access (but most likely crippling the app). Not sure if the other argument applies. It's about old CVEs in runtimes which have been long EOL. 
CC: @h3artbl33d@exquisite.social
@fiery @h3artbl33d You want to run an app that needs access to your home and you don't like it, so maybe, only maybe you shouldn't use the app in the first place? 
CC: @h3artbl33d@exquisite.social
@fiery @h3artbl33d But it doesn't claim it runs in a sandbox. It says "Potentially Unsafe" and if you click it, it clearly says it has full access to your file system. There is not a single occurrence of the word "sandbox".
Let's sum it up. Flatpak offers granular file access permissions via XDG portals. GNU Octave doesn't support it and requires direct access to the file system. The app maintainers give it to it to make the app work. Flatpak/GNOME Software informs about it to allow you to make an educated decision. It even allows you (using Flatseal) to override the permissions and limit it to e.g. a specific folder.
But it gets the blame for lying and being insecure.
@sesivany @fiery @h3artbl33d The mistake here is using the word "safe" here. It's a charged word and creates misconceptions. Unfortunately, despite my potent misgivings about the verbiage, here we are.
The ability to manipulate Flatpak permissions was something that was brought up years ago too. One of the reasons why KDE Plasma has a panel in system settings to manipulate permissions for Flatpaks is to deal with this problem.
Users need the ability to grant and revoke any app permission.
@sesivany @fiery @h3artbl33d I wish that GNOME had taken the same approach and integrated Flatseal into GNOME Settings. It's a critical application for giving the user control over Flatpaks. It would also allow for use-cases like time-limited extra grants and such for static permissions.
@Conan_Kudo @sesivany @fiery @h3artbl33d I heartily agree. There are conversely some apps that didn't do what I needed them to do without access to more of $HOME, etc., and only became useful once I used flatseal to allow that to happen. I'm of the opinion we should probably ship flatseal by default at least for Gnome, despite the counter-argument of potential foot-rakes.
@fiery @h3artbl33d Most apps will work fine with flatpak permissions removed. The only issues could be removing the access to a part of the FS which is needed by the app, if you remove the internet access for a connected app (like an IM client), if you remove the compositor access to a graphic app, etc.
Flatpak permissions aren't that bad. I would have prefered if there was more granularity with Xorg (like not allowing sharing the whole screen), but that's an Xorg limitation.