[522] in SIPB bug reports
xscreensaver timeout bug
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun May 14 00:05:11 1989
Date: Sun, 14 May 89 00:04:59 EDT
From: Jonathan I. Kamens <jik@Athena.MIT.EDU>
To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: bug-sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, sipb@athena.mit.edu
In-Reply-To: Theodore Ts'o's message of Sat, 13 May 89 19:45:20 EDT <8905132345.AA04941@THOR.MIT.EDU.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 13 May 89 19:45:20 EDT
From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Address: EC Bemis 307, 3 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: (617) 225-6367
Some other people thought this was a bug as well, and there has been
much discussion and, well, flamage, on the SIPB list. Unfortunately,
jik went ahead and made the modifications before any consensus was
reached, thus presenting us with a {\em fait accompli}.
I believe that a consensus *was* reached, or, at least, as much as a
consensus as you can expect from an issue debated in the SIPB. By my
count, the following SIPB members (8 of them) approved of my
suggestion without any modifications: jik, bjaspan, jtkohl, amehta,
amgreene, csmith, rfrench, drwho. The following people objected (3 of
them): srz, chariot, simsong. tytso and dkk were a bit in the middle,
but more against it than for it, and jslove was a bit up in the air
but more for it than against it. That makes an 8 to 4 vote counting
only the people who expressed definite opinions, or a 9 to 6 vote
counting the other three people whose votes I would be unsure of. If
this vote were taken at at a SIPB meeting, it would have caused the
modifications to proceed.
In his defense, there are some reasons for making the change. Apparently
a lot of people have been abusing xscreensaver by locking a public
workstation for a long time, and this is causing problems during the end
of the term. And if there were two version of the program available,
people in the public clusters would just use the private workstation
version.
However, I don't believe that the new version of the xscreensaver will
solve things. First of all, it annoys private workstation owners a lot,
as you've discovered. Jik's attitude has been "tough". Second of all,
people will just get their own private xscreensavers and we will lose
control of people will be running. Finally, doing this means that we
have to be fascist with respect to source code. If there's one thing
we've learned, it's that challenging MIT students by technology or by
hiding of information is STUPID. All it takes is one person to keep an
unmodified copy of the program in his or her locker, and it's done for.
I disagree with the assumptions you make, and I don't understand why
you make them. I *don't* understand why you assume that there will be
a large number of people who can get their hands on the sources and/or
had already copied the binary into their home directory before I made
the change! I don't agree with that assumption at all (how many
people do you know who have room in their home directories to store
more than 500k of binary just because it might be modified at some
time in the future).
If you want, I'll give you a copy of the unmodified sources. If you
want to compile them and put the binary in a publicaly accessible place,
go right ahead. It points out how stupid this whole idea is.
You're way out of line here, Ted. "Oh, gee, even though more people
agreed with the changes than opposed it, I don't agree, so I'm going
to go against the collective SIPB decision and make sure that a binary
without the timeout exists somewhere in a public place." Give me a
break.
I gave very clear reasons in my original message why I *did not* think
that there was time to wait until a meeting to discuss this issue. As
a result, the discussion took place over the sipb mailing list, where
I'll bet a lot *more* more people took part in it than would have at a
meeting. After much more discussion than would have taken place at a
meeting, there was still a sizeable majority of people in favor of
making the modifications. I therefore made them.
Because more people supported the timeout than did not, I consider
that position on the matter to be a SIPB policy decision. You have
gone against that decision by telling Ron you would give him the
sources and encouraging him to put a binary somewhere public.
And whoever gave the sources to Tom Coppetto to put in the ls locker
is, in my opinion, equally out of line.
jik
