Re: [PATCH] Remove absolute paths from gpg.rc
On 2007-03-22 16:34:44 +0000, Dave wrote:
> 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.
Now, if software writers make bad decisions, that's the fault and
responsibility of the sysadmin himself? Great!
> > (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.
Unfortunately, system administrators can't do anything about that.
> > And what if users have different wishes?
>
> I've already explained several times that the user doesn't own the system.
You don't know what you're talking about.
> The physical user is governed by the owner of the system.
Which is not the system administrator.
> > And what about binary distributions?
>
> By GPL, they must include source.
What does this change? The advantage of binary distribution is to
avoid recompilation.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> - 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)