I think you are conflating your restrictive and painful company policies with features that can be beneficial to the users. I believe such a permission system

I think you are conflating your restrictive and painful company policies with features that can be beneficial to the users. I believe such a permission system can be a good thing. Apart from the "the app could be a bit malicious and I can't check by looking at its code because it's not available" situation which does not really concern me because I avoid proprietary apps, let alone apps that could be a bit malicious, it reduces the surface attack. Imagine a browser that asks for no permissions, or for temporary ones when needed (access to the microphone or the webcam for example - not sure Flatpak allows temporary permissions, but still). Some malicious website trying to exploit a security flaw would be restricted in the harm it can cause by the permission system. The user is still in control because they can decide what to allow. Actually, such a system improves the user control because now, the user can also deny things if they want. Such system can be abused by restrictive policies, but the problem is there: in the policies. Now, I won't use Flatpak as long as I can, because I don't like its heaviness. It takes space on the disk. I don't like the delays it causes when running an app. The integration of Flatpak apps in the system is not perfect yet and I notice it. But this permission system? Yes, looks good :-)