seth@megad.UUCP (Seth H Zirin) (09/09/85)
> The argument thus far is that binary licenses to UNIX should always > come with a few sources because of various security and administrative > policies that a site might need to institute that shouldn't require > a full source license, among those mentioned were login.c. So far the > list has been: > > 1. The ULIMIT problem, modifying login.c is currently the > only effective way to raise ulimit above 2048 on SYSV. > > 2. Enforcing times when certain users can or cannot login, > or other variables (eg. load, free dialups available etc.) > This *could* be done via /etc/profile but I think most would > agree it belongs in login. > > 3. Schemes like if they type in N bad passwds hang the phone up, > maybe warn someone (the user or SA.) The things you mention could easily be implemented with a login program written locally at your site. There is no cast-in-stone rule that says you cannot replace ANY Unix command with your own (that includes Init). When /etc/getty calls login, there's no reason it can't be the one you wrote. This solution works for many of the simple cases (login, getty, passwd, etc) but would not be very useful for a large program like uucp. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Seth H Zirin UUCP: {decvax, ihnp4}!philabs!sbcs!megad!seth Keeper of the News for megad
root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) (09/13/85)
Re: Lots of 'you can too fix that without the sources' First: You're all right, absolutely unequivocally. Putting your own frob into /etc/inittab which does some stuff and then invokes getty or your own /bin/login seems to solve a lot of the problems mentioned. Re-writing various UNIX commands from scratch is also mentioned, but I take this less seriously (except from RMS and the GNU folks :-) So...My question is: is it true? There is no rational argument for including a few sources with a binary UNIX license? Or is everyone just showing how cleverly they can work around what they really need (an animal in a trap will gnaw its foot off to get out)? I mean, ya shoulda seen the things we did to the RT11 binaries about 10 years ago, woulda made a grown man cry! Maybe it's just me, but I really hate the way this UNIX source thing is going, source sites becoming the small minority and being threatened with extinction. I think the death of UNIX lies down that road as adaptation slows to a crawl. But that's a different argument. -Barry Shein, Boston University