[TUHS] History of chown semantics

[Tim Newsham]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 9:13 AM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Quotas aren't very useful any more, what with most systems being either
> single-user clients or servers with no need for privilege separation
> other than root/non-root.  Unless you are using mandatory access
> control, which has never been a standard part of any Unix-like system, I
> see no reason to continue to forbid changes of ownership.

I think such a drastic change in semantics is bound to violate
some security assumption of some software.

For example, some program might have you create a file
and use your ownership of that file as proof of your
authorization.

-- 
Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | @newshtwit | thenewsh.blogspot.com