Re: Thinking outside the box on file systems

From: Lennart Sorensen
Date: Wed Aug 15 2007 - 17:04:31 EST


On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 01:44:50PM -0700, Marc Perkel wrote:
> Yes - that's a good example. Git is far more powerful
> and a different paradigm for CVS. Someone had to think
> outside the box and come up with a new way of looking
> at things. I'm trying to do something like that with
> this idea.
>
> To me it make more sense to get rid of file
> permissions and look at people permissions. It reminds
> me of a story a friend of mine told about her 4 year
> old son.
>
> The story was that they were driving down the road
> when they saw a wheel come off a truck. The son said,
> "look mommy, that wheel lost it's truck."
>
> To me files are like the wheel. Rather than having the
> file know all it's owners it makes more sense for the
> owners to know it's files.

Except for the fact that on most systems each owner may have millions of
files, while very rarely does a file have more than a few dozen owners
or groups. Having to wade through the permissions of millions of things
seems like a lot more work than checking a few dozen things.

Also the thing is that I care who can access files, while I do not
really care what particular set of files a user has access to. It is
the data I am protecting, not the user.

--
Len Sorensen
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