Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 12:27:52 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> To: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Adam Laurie <adam@algroup.co.uk>, security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/mail/pine4 Makefile (fwd) Message-ID: <2876.970342072@winston.osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: Message from Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.ORG> of "Sat, 30 Sep 2000 11:56:27 PDT." <20000930115627.C39894@freefall.freebsd.org>
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> If you're talking about policy changes like restricting telnet etc, > then unfortunately those discussions will almost always be taken over > by the armchair generals and theres not much you can do about it Erm, as one of the possible arm-chair generals in question, I think this vastly over-simplifies the argument and ignores the fact that many of us so-called "arm chair generals" are not just nit-picking individual changes or standing in the way for the sheer hell of it but are, in fact, defending an entire ideology which we occasionally see in danger of being fatally compromised. The ideology I'm talking about is nothing less than "base functionality" and how users perceive the system, a perception which has been, in so many demonstrably favorable ways, carefully cultivated and honed over the 7+ years of FreeBSD's existence. FreeBSD is known for giving a rich out-of-box experience and being (comparatively) easy to install and use by a certain percentage of the user population. FreeBSD is also used in preference to other alternatives such as NetBSD, OpenBSD and BSD/OS for many of those reasons. So, when the security mavens come around and start waving the Big Stick at things which compromise their own vision of what constitutes an ideal out-of-box operating system configuration, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if it sometimes runs into conflict with the "established vision", one which has been established for many good reasons of its own given how FreeBSD has differentiated itself and continues to do so. This is no less than a clash of fundamental ideologies at work and neither "side" will advance for as long as people ignore this fact and fail to realize that both sides are in fact "right" for some value of the term just as they're both "wrong", that being nothing less than a fundamental law which can't and won't be changed through argument. Once we've achieved that perspective, we can start achieving compromises which somehow increase security without seriously decreasing the positive attributes which got FreeBSD to where it is in the first place. Enough said. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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