From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 24 19:28:49 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6F8FC37B41A; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:28:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id 7B9D88143D; Thu, 25 Apr 2002 11:57:03 +0930 (CST) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 11:57:03 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey To: Terry Lambert Cc: Robert Watson , Jordan Hubbard , Oscar Bonilla , Anthony Schneider , Mike Meyer , hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Security through obscurity? (was: ssh + compiled-in SKEY support considered harmful?) Message-ID: <20020425115703.A79657@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <3CC6860B.17F10FBA@mindspring.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3CC6860B.17F10FBA@mindspring.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.23i Organization: The FreeBSD Project Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-PGP-Fingerprint: 9A1B 8202 BCCE B846 F92F 09AC 22E6 F290 507A 4223 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wednesday, 24 April 2002 at 3:16:43 -0700, Terry Lambert wrote: > > The X11 we are talking about here is not "the default X11", which is > a set of distfiles, but a "ports" X11, which is not, but which is > likely to be the basis of future distfiles. Correct. > So we are really talking about an alternate set of code to provide > or not provide the TCP "X11 display service". More to the point, we're telling people that this is XFree86, a platform-independent package which we also supply. But it's not quite XFree86 because we've modified it. The modification in this case is very small but very far-reaching, and a newcomer would suspect the operating system, not XFree86, when he has problems. > The thing that offended the hell out of everyone way that the > decision was made for the future distfiles release (which is used by > practically everyone) by sneaking it in the ports back door (which > is used by practically no one), which, when viewed disparagingly, > looks like an attempt to "pull a fast one". Hmm. No, I for one wasn't "offended the hell". And I really don't see any malice here: it was done with the best of intentions, but I think without a proper understanding of the consequences. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message