I think Debian's rationale is that if a sysadmin interactively installs a package, then that sysadmin does so to get its primary service (if any) running, so pa

I think Debian's rationale is that if a sysadmin interactively installs a package, then that sysadmin does so to get its primary service (if any) running, so packages should arrange this by default. > but it's bad as an overall practice. I agree with you, but only in the case of non-interactive use. Different use cases demand different defaults. Tooling should be able to make the appropriate distinction automatically. Currently, the tooling does not, but that (IMHO) is a design flaw in the tooling, which Debian does not produce. In the interactive case, I'm torn, but I do see the logic. In the general case, then, I maintain that tooling should use policy-rc.d to adjust the default as necessary, and that failure to do so is in the tooling, not in Debian.