>From: Josh Lynch <tyme@visi.com>
>At 08:45 PM 3/11/97 -0800, you [mbell] wrote:
>>[extract of RMS position on wheel group omitted]
>Hmm, I can "see" where Stallman's posistion would be good....in a place
>where everyone is honest, but, come on does anyone really know where that
>place is? 
>Sysadmins holding faciest power over their users??! Last time I checked,
>that was in the job description, to take care of the system(s)! And that
>definately includes keeping the root passwd and account as private as
>possible...anyway..

Shrug.  Back in the good old days (into the late 1980s), overly retentive
super-lusers were a far greater problem than crackers.  There are few
things more annoying that being unable to do something useful because the
person authorized to do it is not interested.  An example would be adding
a printcap entry for a "seldom used" remote printer, correcting errors in
the termcap database, or installing new software.  Having super-user
ability on a system means one has a duty to serve the needs of the users
no matter how "uninteresting", but some do not live up to that responsibility.
These days, the need to keep crackers from destroying or misusing user data
makes the "wheel" group a necessity, but it was not always so.

>"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in
>the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us" -- Calvin, Calvin &
>Hobbes

Yes.

Max