Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2001 01:39:04 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org> Cc: Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@atg.aciworldwide.com>, Bernd Walter <ticso@mail.cicely.de>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: uucp user shell and home directory Message-ID: <3BBEC328.BBA18D7C@mindspring.com> References: <ticso@mail.cicely.de> <20011004194336.C3918@cicely20.cicely.de> <200110041814.f94IEn8f038432@atg.aciworldwide.com> <15292.43702.284147.973393@nomad.yogotech.com> <3BBD8369.835E9190@mindspring.com> <20011005130234.B79332@xor.obsecurity.org>
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This UCP thing has really pissed me off. Maybe that's because I've been using "the Internet" since 1981, when the fourth node on the ARPANet was installed at the University of Utah, and I remember the day when all email, at one hop or another, transited UUCP, and I've used UUCP over TCP to workaround brain damage in POP3 and IMAP based mail distribution more times than I can count on my fingers and toes. In any case, if you fall on the other side in this case, this post is bound to piss you off right back, so you can ignore it, if you don't want your fragile sensibilities offended. Kris Kennaway wrote: > > . o O ( Why am I bothering to answer these questions again? Terry is > just talking to hear his own voice. ) Whatever. You keep playing semantic games to let you answer the letter of the complaints, but not the spirit. > > Who commits the patches to the port? > > A FreeBSD ports committer. Me, if the maintainer (Lyndon) can't find > anyone else. You are missing the point: the commits are bottlenecked through people other than the maintainer. In other ports, this is not the case, since the ports are derived from other public projects, which have control over their own source tree, and therefore do not need the intermediary of a third party who is not really personally committed to maintaining the code (or else they would be the maintainer). In other words, the code is being kicked out on the street without a real home to call its own. It's being set up as "OK, you're the maintainers, but we reserve the right to screw you by exercising editorial control over the changes you are allowed to make to the software you maintain, so really, you aren't so much the maintainers as you are our code bitches, but feel free to call yourself maintainers, if that floats your boat". > > Where does the source code for the port live, such that when you cd > > to it's directory in /usr/ports and type "make install" (so you can > > be a UUCP to Internet gateway for the UUCP users), there's some > > place where you will always be able to download it from? > > MASTER_SITE_LOCAL. Please RTFPort or STFU. Again, you have missed the point. I have to think that it is an intentional act on your part, or you simply weren't around when the FreeBSD FTP servers went away and the "release" target in /usr/src/release/Makefile stopped working because a number of the packages needed to make the release, and a number of patches to those packages -- particularly, the documentation management packages -- disappeared off the Internet, except in one obscure corner, which was _NOT_ in the "MASTER_SITE_LOCAL", _NOR_ was it listed in the ports under alternative sites. Again, the code is getting kicked out on the street, without a real home to call its own, and the back doorstep of the home where it lived is stating a willingness to give it crusts of bread to live on for now, with no guarantee that in future lean times, it won't die from exposure. The overall philosphy being exhibited here, shoot first and ask questions later, is incredibly weenie, at best. It's really annoying that it's being treated as "this is now a port like all others", when in fact it lacks a central development effort, mailing lists, or a source repository or distribution site -- and therefore it is most definitely _NOT_ "a port like all others". So it is the people claiming it is like all others who should STFU. It's also really, really annoying that such a half-assed job is being done about the removal of dependencies: there are now a number of email servers and other systems which will fail to maintain complete functionality, should this "port not like all other ports" fall by the wayside (e.g. the sendmail shipped by default with FreeBSD has UUCP support built into it). Finally, I think the rationale for the removal is lame; it amounts to "there is a security bug with --config, and since I am anal, and a tiny minority has insisted on --config being there for their obscure use of the program, and the vast majority of people who use it and would be happy with --config being #ifdef'ed out are unwilling to fix the --config problem such that --config can stay there and appease the three people in the world who incorrectly believe they need it, well, we're going to punish you by diking the code out entirely". If we wanted OpenBSD's idea of security, we'd damn well be running OpenBSD. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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