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From: wilber@alice.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: GNU security, size
Message-ID: <7399@alice.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 24-Oct-87 04:58:43 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.7399
Posted: Sat Oct 24 04:58:43 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Nov-87 20:06:45 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
Lines: 34
Keywords: GNU security, size

Eric Green sez:
>1) If there is NO security, then there is nothing to get around, and,
>2) If there is NO security, then there is DEFINITELY no need to get
>   around it.
>
>Remember, RMS's background is not commercial high-security data
>processing, but, rather, academia, research, and program development,
>where security is actually an IMPEDIMENT to productivity, because it
>impairs the sharing of code, algorithms, test data, and other things
>of that sort.

If I had no file security on my single user machine it would be a major 
impediment to my productivity since about once a week I would accidently trash 
the system by deleting or overwriting some critical file I didn't intend to
modify.  Being permanently logged in as super user is like carrying a
loaded gun everywhere you go.  Even more fundamental is memory protection
so one rogue process doesn't bring the system crashing down.  I once did
some hacking under MS-LOSS (pity me) and every time a pointer in some
undebugged piece of code went astray the kernel (or what passes for a kernel
in MS-LOSS) would get wedged and I'd have to reboot the system.  In UNIX,
where the superblock in core doesn't always coincide with what's on disk,
this could fry your file system.

What RMS could do without violating his security philosophy is provide
the standard UNIX protection capabilites except with no passwords.
That way anyone who wanted to could log in as root whenever there was a
reason for it but normally the system would protect you from your own
stupidity.

On another GNU matter that has been brought up:  Yeah, the GNU software
eats up a lot of memory (GNU Emacs fits on my machine but Scheme doesn't)
but RMS is right to put the emphasis on making things fast and simple
instead of squeezing out bytes.  In a few more years we'll all have
desk top PC's with 64Mb.  So why sweat it?