On 2007-03-25 08:31:46 +0000, Dave wrote: > On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 04:11:35AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > Now, if software writers make bad decisions, that's the fault and > > responsibility of the sysadmin himself? Great! > > Making a compile-time option isn't a bad decision if the default > yields correct behavior.
There first needs to be an agreement on what the correct behavior is. > ...but at any rate, a sysadmin is responsible for the software he > installs, and if he installs badly written software (i.e., software > with bad decisions) without fixing it (i.e., reversing the bad > decisions), he's not really doing his job too well. . . The sysadmin is certainly not responsible if some software has a security hole (or a buggy behavior that can lead to a security hole), unknown to him. [thousands of programs] > > Unfortunately, system administrators can't do anything about that. > > As programmers, we can make their job easier, by not adding to the > pile of UNIX-incompatible software out there. (This is the Mutt-Dev > list, after all, not some sort of Mutt-Admins list.) I entirely agree. > > > I've already explained several times that the user doesn't own > > > the system. > > > > You don't know what you're talking about. > > If I'm a user on a corporate server, I don't own the system. I don't > suppose you disagree with me there. . . In *your* case, the doesn't own the system. There are other places where the user partly owns the system (well, participates to the decisions, at least). > > > The physical user is governed by the owner of the system. > > > > Which is not the system administrator. > > The owner of the system hires the system administrator to carry out > his wishes. I strongly doubt you'd hire a sysadmin who didn't > represent your interests to administer your system. In other words, > the sysadmin is (an agent of) the owner. You're playing with words. But at some places, the user*s* (partly) decide what should be done. If some option is configure-time instead of run-time, then a part of the users will not be pleased. > > > > And what about binary distributions? > > > > > > By GPL, they must include source. > > > > What does this change? > > You've trimmed out some essential context. The GPL ensures that a > user can fix and/or reconfigure software, if necessary. Said otherwise, the user does the sysadmin's job. > > The advantage of binary distribution is to > > avoid recompilation. > > Right, but that doesn't prevent you from getting the source and > recompiling anyway, As a user, I already spend to much time recompiling programs on various architectures (for various reasons). > if you'd like to reverse a stupid decision made by the distributor. So, Mutt's configure shouldn't allow stupid decisions. BTW, if Mutt wants to prevent the user from using his own $PATH, it should also forbid shell execution and more generally, arbitrary program execution (such as the well-known /usr/bin/env wrapper). -- 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)
