Excuses and Reasons

Brad makes an excellent comment regarding the root logins via ssh issue:

I think the biggest disagreement we’re having here is where should this be solved. Adrian , as a developer, thinks it should be coded around. Myself, as a sysadmin, think the user should take some responsibility for their actions and check their setup on the critical pieces of software – in this case, the Internet accessible ones. It all makes sense now. I think the movie Babe probably best covers this when the sheep dog goes to talk to the sheep and talks very slowly and clearly because every sheep dog knows that sheep are stupid. When the sheep reply they do so very slowly and clearly because every sheep knows that wolves are ignorant. In this case every developer knows that all users are stupid and so they try to make everything work as safely and easily as possible. Then of course every sysadmin knows that programmers are incompetent and so they double check everything and always assume that the developer has stuffed up. It’s then quite natural (and indeed beneficial) for Brad and I to have differing reactions to this issue. As a sysadmin Brad knows that he should read the README.Debian files for the security related packages he installs and that he should double check configuration files (plus he often knows how to do this off the top of his head). As a developer however, I know that when the software gets into the hands of end users (as operating systems for PCs generally do), the users aren’t going to do any of this (mostly because they won’t know how) so the default configuration should be secure and stable to avoid the user having problems.