begin Tobin Fricke quotation: > I think your idea that a GNU System shouldn't allow the sysadmin to limit > the freedoms of the users is pretty ridiculous. After all, it's the > sysadmin who owns the machine, pays for the network connection, is > responsible for network traffic originating at the machine, etc... Yes, but aren't you forgetting that GNU is the brainchild of RMS, who once campaigned to have users set their password to the empty string on the grounds that denying anyone access to the computer was immoral, and who also has objected to the concept of a "wheel group" as a fascistic tool of admins who wrongly think they should have more power than the average user? In that context, the idea that firewalls are immoral makes perfect sense. If some script kiddie in Bulgaria wants to take over or DoS your machine, then why shouldn't they? Firewalls are for the kind of despicable fascist who thinks he has rights to a piece of hardware just because he paid money for it. Now, sarcasm aside, to be fair, RMS objected to passwords and wheel groups in the context of a university CS lab (one with significant government funding, courtesy DARPA) that had traditionally done just fine without such things, and was getting them not because of any real threat, but just because of an administrative power grab. For that place at that time, he was probably right (and I say "probably" only because I wasn't there). I don't know if he would argue today against passwords and wheel groups in the context of the modern internet, on machines that belong to businesses or private individuals. I hope not. Craig
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