February 23, 2003
Must have been a windows programmer

Who wrote the Courier configuration scripts because a unix programmer would know better than to presume he knows what the user wants better than the user..

configure: WARNING: === Do not compile Courier-IMAP as root. Compile
configure: WARNING: === Courier-IMAP as a non-root user then su to
configure: WARNING: === root before running make install. You must now
configure: WARNING: === remove this entire directory and then extract the
configure: WARNING: === source code from the tarball as a non-root user
configure: WARNING: === and rerun the configure script. If you have read
configure: WARNING: === the INSTALL file you should have known this. So
configure: WARNING: === you better read INSTALL again.
configure: error: aborted.

Not only presumptuous.. but arrogant as hell.. Of course, takes 10 seconds to hack it, but it's annoying nonetheless.

Posted February 23, 2003 07:35 PM in Geek Stuff
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Comments
On February 23, 2003 07:41 PM Steve Friedl added:

Maybe you're really a n00b but don't know it? :-)

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On February 23, 2003 08:14 PM Apokalyptik added:

yea that ones always irk'd me :)

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On February 23, 2003 09:27 PM Rob Speicher added:

That's surprisingly arrogant.

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On February 23, 2003 10:08 PM Steve added:

I believe this is the same fellow who for a long time had all of Pac*Bell blacklisted for spam. Not just his mail server, but web too. It's been too much trouble to circumvent for me to get Courier-IMAP working until I noticed today that this seems to have been relaxed.

Great software, "attitude" at no extra charge.

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On February 23, 2003 10:11 PM Techie2000 added:

As my spanish teacher would say:

Somebody needs to pop his ego bubble!

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On March 3, 2003 02:42 PM Nevertheless added:

Attitude-yes. Windows programmer-no.

If you're willing/able to modify the source beyond what the devleoper has decided is the best way to build his/her source, then you're also willing and able to deal with any problems that occur from the modification of his software.

His--and any other software developer's--audience is more than Unix hackers and system administrators nowadays, so he's got to design his install scripts around users.

I find it as funny that you won't su to a non-priveledged user for the build as you do him requring you to build as one.

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On March 3, 2003 02:59 PM kasia added:

Actually.. you missed the point.. He's forcing me to install software his way.. when it would work perfectly fine either way.. What his idea of system security is may not necessarily be everyone's so not giving users the options is doing exactly what I hate most in Microsoft.. Making the decision for me.

I can make my own decisions when it comes to administering my system.

My way requires no more work for him than his way.. actually less.. and leaves the user to make the adult decision.

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On March 3, 2003 03:04 PM Steve Friedl added:

That's the first time I've ever seen UNIX software that outright refused to build as root, and there didn't seem to be any legitimate explanation why.

I find it hard to believe that the author of Courier has some insight into security that the authors of OpenSSH, sendmail, BIND, Postfix, apache, mysql, perl, and every other important package I've used in my UNIX career do not.

It's one thing to recommend (though it's helpful to have a good reason), it's another to be insulting about it.

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On March 3, 2003 11:30 PM dave added:

"So you better read INSTALL again."

There's nothing wrong with an attitude, so long as you're able to express it in correct English. Until then, your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!

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On March 4, 2003 04:50 PM murky added:

First thing that comes to mind is, why are you running unknown scripts like that as root? I can see the arrogance part, but maybe he's peeved with careless people. But in the end, like you say, it doesn't matter, so (probably) no harm done.


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