On 2017-06-30 09:17, Russell Stuart wrote:
gwmfms6@openmailbox.org is right in saying today's computer users don't have the "sharing is what makes us bigger than the sum of the parts" philosophy. Where he goes wrong is in assuming they share their computers. While there was a time many people shared a single CPU, today many CPU's share a person. Or less obliquely, everyone has their own phone / tablet / laptop, which they don't share with anyone except US border agents. In this environment umask is a quaint hallmark of a bygone time.
Very often I see families sharing a computer in my neighborhood. They each have an account on the computer in the living room (for example). The parents set it up. And I doubt the parent knows that the kids can read everything they have in their account. (i.e., the kids are more computer savvy).
I can see that there is resistance to changing this policy despite the fact that no one has told me a convincing reason for keeping it.
Ultimately, it wouldn't be as big a deal if it was possible to change the default umask for the gnome-session in Debian Stretch.