[TUHS] History of chown semantics

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Thursday,  9 January 2014 at 17:03:44 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
>
> I just don't see how having the ability to give away a file to some
> one else made it easier for anyone - system programmer or admin.
> The idea of giving a device back begs the question of how did you
> get ownership in the first place.

A real-life modern example: my wife has a digital camera with a card
that her OS can't read.  So she gives it to me, I take out the card
and read it onto the disk for her, which she then accesses via NFS.
As a result the files belong to me, and to enable her write access, I
have to chmod the directory.  A chown would be more appropriate.

None of this contradicts the issues with allowing non-root chown, but
it does show a valid reason to want to do so.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at FreeBSD.org for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft MUA reports
problems, please read http://tinyurl.com/broken-mua
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20140110/01f36f71/attachment.sig>