On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 02:06:48PM -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> > Ahh, so GNU su is less secure because Richard Stallman, in his infinite
> > wisdom, believes security is a bad thing and that any lowlife h4x0r should
> > be able to gain root priveleges and trash the system. This explains so
> > much about the GNU philosophy that I am overwhelmed by its greatness!
>
> You have to also understand that this was written probably 15 years ago,
> when the Internet was but a dot on the h4x0r scope, who were mainly on
> BBS's.
>
> His comments were based on a political system in large businesses and
> universities, where control of the mainframe (not random shoebox-sized
> computers running quake servers) was a power play.
>
> It's a different world now...
I realise that, however it does not change that when he wrote it, he
believed that the wheel group would enhance local security. He made a
political decision at the time to lessen security in the name of users'
rights. Yet as you say the world has changed. Now central security is
paramount to just about every system and network on or off of the
Internet. The political decisions of the past don't seem wise or forward
thinking anymore.
And there lies the center of my annoyance: We don't have a wheel group or
anything like it today because of a bad call which seemed good at the
time, more than a decade ago. Whether or not it would enhance security at
all is not even in question. Only the historical tradition that it has
not been there for so long seems to argue against it. Might not matter so
much on my single-user system behind a firewall, but it sure matters on
the ISP shell server with hundreds of users..
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@bluecherry.net> You expected a coherent reply?
<Endy> Actually, I think I'll wait for potato to be finalised before
installing debian.
<Endy> That should be soon, I'm hoping. :)
<knghtbrd> Endy: You obviously know very little about Debian.
Attachment:
pgpbHXB2OgtEf.pgp
Description: PGP signature