Re: [ 00/19] 3.10.1-stable review

Ingo Molnar
2013-07-19T10:35:43Z

* Sarah Sharp <sarah.a.sharp@linux.intel.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 02:42:16AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > If you can point me to a single instance of Linus "abusing" someone
> > who is not one of his trusted persons, who really should be able to
> > deal with that, or someone who did not provoke him to go into rant
> > mode, then I'm all on your side.
>
> Not that I think this link will sway you, and this thread *should*
> really die down so we can discuss this at KS instead:
>
> https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/1vyfmNCYpi5
>
> "So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro,
> and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the
> road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the
> root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print
> out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill
> yourself now. The world will be a better place."
>
> Linus asked someone to go kill themselves. [...]

No, he did not.

He, as he declared it in the first stentences of his post, was venting and
cursing:

Venting.

I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so
you might want to avert your eyes now.

I'm, as the author of several security patches, partly a distro "security
person" too, and I was not offended, I took away the message from Linus:

don't "fix" perceived security threats by cumbersome security measures,
because users will address that by creating even larger security threats:

http://www.merseyworld.com/precinct/Apr99/prec8.html

Thanks,

Ingo