system autodeath

[Horst H. von Brand]

Seth Vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 14:22 -0400, max wrote:
> > Matthew Miller wrote:
> > > On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 10:39:16AM -0400, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> > >> On philosophical grounds, I'm against forcing people forward, even for
> > >> their own good...  /encouraging/ them forward is a much better idea.
> > > 
> > > It's not for their good. It's for *our* good as distribution developers and
> > > as network citizens.
> > > 
> > > And it's part of our responsibility: we're putting powerful software into
> > > their hands and then not providing security updates for it for very long at
> > > all. Turning off network access before they all become part of a gigantic
> > > botnet is the right thing to do.

> > Informing people of the dangers is the right thing to do, forcing them 
> > down your path is never the right thing to do.

> unless you're a sysadmin for a large university, for example.

Hum... if you mean the sysadmin in such a case /has/ to force-feed updates
to the systems under her care (or be shot at dawn without trial), you are
right. If you mean sysadmins at large universities should be forced to
update the systems under their care, I'd guess they don't need any
"forcing", they'll do it on their own (or pay dire consequences long before
the next Fedora rolls along ;-)
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile 2340000       Fax:  +56 32 2797513