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Date:      Thu, 13 Jul 2000 14:32:58 -0600
From:      Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
To:        Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
Cc:        "David G. Andersen" <dga@POBOX.COM>, security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Two kinds of advisories?
Message-ID:  <4.3.2.7.2.20000713142419.04b82ce0@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <396E253C.A07A93D7@softweyr.com>
References:  <4.3.2.7.2.20000713120631.04d53b60@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20000713122244.00b06410@localhost>

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At 02:23 PM 7/13/2000, Wes Peters wrote:

>Why not just educate them to RTFMessage?  They clearly say "FreeBSD ports",
>all you need to do is educate them about what that means.

Wes:

As a fellow writer, I'm sure you understand that this isn't always
enough. When a copy editor makes what s/he thinks is an immaterial change
to a headline, the consequences can be nasty. (I've gotten intense flames 
about stories whose headlines were phrased in such a way that they could be 
misinterpreted, even when just reading the article would have cleared up
any confusion.)

It's a fact of life that people are in the throes of information overload.
They skim headlines and don't have time to delve. For the sake of FreeBSD's 
reputation, it makes good sense to make the subject lines SUPER-unambiguous.
I'm not the only one who has noticed that the current format has caused
third-party bugs to be seen as security holes in FreeBSD. Let's make it
so there's no chance of this misperception continuing. I really like
Matt's idea of numbering Ports advisories as PORTS-<Whatever> to
distinguish them from bugs in FreeBSD proper.

--Brett



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