Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!ncar!ico!vail!rcd
From: rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Re^2: GNU, security, and RMS
Summary: technical vs social views of "looseness"
Message-ID: <15837@vail.ICO.ISC.COM>
Date: 7 Jun 89 22:04:00 GMT
References: <...a mind boggling number> <13783@ut-emx.UUCP>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp, Boulder, CO
Lines: 20

In article <13783@ut-emx.UUCP>, clyde@ut-emx.UUCP (Clyde W. Hoover) writes:
> It is always easier (from a techincal viewpoint) to start restrictive
> and loosen up...

Sure, but distributing the system in very restrictive form has a social
effect--namely that some folks will look at it and say, "Gosh, they send it
out with the lid clamped down tight; that must be the way it *should* be
done."  From a social-interaction viewpoint, it's much harder to loosen it
up.  You can tighten things if you get into problems (although there's a
certain closing-the-barn-door... effect there).

I guess I've been conditioned, but UNIX default permissions have made sense
to me for a long time--files tend to get created as globally readable but
only locally writable.

[Disclaimer:  I am thankfully not a sociologist, so observations of social
effects are based on unsubstantiated common experience.]
-- 
Dick Dunn      UUCP: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd           (303)449-2870
   ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.