Agreed. Especially nowadays, unless you're on an embedded system a few megabytes doesn't really matter. I'd rather the package ship with a default up to date "ish" set of data, then have it update something in ~ later.

At least that way it's going to always work: I'm picturing scenarios in which someone distributes the deb/rpm/whatever and installs the package on machines that don't necessarily have outbound Internet connectivity. (Production environments. f.ex.)