On 2007-03-22 16:34:44 +0000, Dave wrote: > On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 03:09:26PM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > On 2007-03-21 15:35:18 +0000, Dave wrote: > > > On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 01:49:45PM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > > > > But a *compile-time* option would be a bad idea, as the one who > > > > installs the software is not always the one who uses it. > > > > > > The one who installs the software should be the system > > > administrator, who's (an agent of) the owner of the system. It's his > > > domain to make these types of decisions about his system. > > > > A system administrator doesn't always know what he is doing exactly > > That's the fault (and responsibility) of the sysadmin himself.
Now, if software writers make bad decisions, that's the fault and responsibility of the sysadmin himself? Great! > > (with thousands of programs to install, this is not surprising). > > If there weren't so much overlap in functionality between those > "thousands of" programs, many of them (especially the big ones with > big, dirty, nonorthogonal ones that take most of the sysadmin's time > ... in contrast, cat(1) takes very little to configure) would be > unnecessary and/or greatly simplified. Unfortunately, system administrators can't do anything about that. > > And what if users have different wishes? > > I've already explained several times that the user doesn't own the system. You don't know what you're talking about. > The physical user is governed by the owner of the system. Which is not the system administrator. > > And what about binary distributions? > > By GPL, they must include source. What does this change? The advantage of binary distribution is to avoid recompilation. -- Vincent Lefèvre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
