Re: Sysadmins

[Emmanuel Colbus]

Jonathan S. Shapiro" wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 11:50 +0100, Emmanuel Colbus wrote:
> > Btw, allowing (and also forcing) users to install they own software, and 
> > also 
> > administrate it, would only result into a very great amount of lost time 
> > (redundant work from the users), a very bad security (do you really think 
> > every 
> > user has the competence of a sysadmin?), and a waste of disk space and 
> > other 
> > ressources. If sysadmins were only unneeded parasites, they would have 
> > disappeared for long.
> 
> Why do you think that the installer should permit the installation of
> unconfined software by non-administrative users?

That's a different perspective. Leonardo suggested that all software
should be installed by non-administrative users, which would have also
included all the unconfined one. 

Well, if users can only install confined software, that's fine, but
they shouldn't be forced to install their own software or trust another 
non-administrative user.

> 
> Why do you feel that a user spending their own space is any of the
> administrator's business?

Because it's not really their own space. Maybe, in some places like
the army, security is so important that no user should know anything
about the use of the ressources by the others, but in the main 
areas, policy isn't that strong, and the total amount of disk
space is far lower than the sum of all quotas (as I described it in 
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/l4-hurd/2005-11/msg00051.html).

Therefore, it's also the administrator's business to ensure users
aren't wasting their space for nothing (like different copies of the
same software, because they don't trust each other).

Emmanuel