[12298] in Athena Bugs
decmips 7.7C: mh
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matthew H. Power)
Fri Jul 29 02:49:03 1994
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 1994 02:48:59 EDT
From: "Matthew H. Power" <mhpower@MIT.EDU>
System name: yaz-pistachio
Type and version: KN02ca 7.7C (1 update(s) to same version)
Display type: PMAG-DV
What were you trying to do?
Send mail.
What's wrong:
The mail went out with the string "Matthew H. Power", culled
from the pw_gecos field, in the "From:" line, i.e.,
From: "Matthew H. Power" <mhpower@MIT.EDU>
What should have happened:
The "From:" line should have been the same as in previous
Athena releases, in which the default was not to include a
user's full name in the "From:" line unless the user took
explicit action to enable this, e.g., I would have had
From: mhpower@MIT.EDU
Although this 7.7 change is documented in "Appendix E" of the
System Release Notes, I feel it's a gratuitous user-visible
change that should be removed before the release is finalized.
Arguments against including a full name by default include:
(1) Many users have used chfn to set their "Full name" field
to various frivolous things (e.g., names of characters from
games or comics), in the expectation that this showed up only
in finger output, or perhaps Zephyr messages. There may be
many unfortunate incidents when it unexpectedly shows up in
important mail (e.g., a job application) that gets discarded
by the recipient as appearing non-serious.
(2) Users may also have a limited expectation of privacy, that
their full name would not be actively sent out by the system
unless they explicitly enabled this. (This differs somewhat
from passive availablity of full-name information, e.g., via
fingering @mit.edu or @athena.mit.edu.) This can be a
particular problem if one's full name strongly suggests a
specific gender/race/nationality, and one does not wish their
mail regularly to be read with any associated biases in mind.
(3) The extra data in the "From:" field is obviously a slight
additional load on programs and disks that handle mail. It'll
probably also make some users need to reconfigure software
that lists their mail, or live with a less useful listing. For
example, if they currently list messages by showing the
"From:", "To:", and "Subject:" fields with an 80-character
truncation, they'll less often see any part of Subject because
of the redundant name information in the From and To.
I think this patch should restore the old functionality:
*** mts.c.old Thu Nov 11 06:36:45 1993
--- mts.c Fri Jul 29 01:09:08 1994
***************
*** 523,526 ****
}
! if (MMailids == 0 || *np == '\0')
(void) strcpy (username, pw -> pw_name);
--- 523,528 ----
}
! if (MMailids == 0 || *np == '\0') {
(void) strcpy (username, pw -> pw_name);
+ fullname[0] = '\0';
+ }
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
/afs/dev.mit.edu/project/release/source/src/third/supported/mh.6.8/papers/changes/mh-changes.ms
