Re: [PATCH] Remove absolute paths from gpg.rc
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. He's ultimately
responsible for his system. You're only making his job harder by trying to make
decisions for him, increasing the complexity of his system.
> (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.
> And what if users have different wishes?
I've already explained several times that the user doesn't own the system. The
physical user is governed by the owner of the system. Therefore, the user's
wishes must be compatible with the owner's wishes. (If the owner is a dope,
he'll lose users.)
> And what about binary
> distributions?
By GPL, they must include source.
- Dave