directories. Or, more specifically, with the users inability to
override this default behaviour.
(I.e. ".../username/132da5.slt/...")
This is discussed under two different Bugzilla bug reports:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56002
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70931
1. I understand the thinking behind it, however I believe that,
looking at a computer's filesystem at an overall level, it
accomplishes very little. Most everything on a computer these days is
NOT random. Perhaps Mozilla can be seen to "lead the charge" towards
a fully randomized filesystem, but they should at least allow people
who care about this to be able to turn it off.
2. When dealing with systems that have a large number of user profiles
on them, and working with setting up certain customized settings for
every user, it is a lot easier to do so if you always know where the
directory is - rather than having to deal with a random directory
immediately after its creation.
3. Personally, I simply don't like specifying a set directory during
the profile creation process and having the program tack on some
random subdirectory. I know that Mozilla will create certain static
subdirectories of its own - but these names are always the same and
can be relied upon for consistency.
4. I can get around this annoying behaviour by copying and pasting a
legacy profile structure that does not include the "xxx.slt"
behaviour, then doing a search and replace of the old profile name to
the new one. So, it's possible to "hack" Mozilla into the behaviour I
want - it's just unpleasant and annoying to do so.
Last week, temporarily unable to access Newsgroups, I sent a
message experessing some of the above to one of the Bugzilla
contributors - one of the people who, in the first bugzilla link
above, had actually stated that they thought there SHOULD be a way of
overriding the salting of directories. What followed was a somewhat
confusing and frustrating email exchange that got me nowhere.
One sentiment expressed was that if I wanted things to change, I
could pay this person's company to do so. I have the following
comments on this response:
1. It cannot be the case that when anybody in the world wants to see
something different about Mozilla all they have to do is pay money to
one of the people on the development team, or to that person's
"real-life" company for which they work when they are not contributing
to Mozilla on their own time. Not only would this raise some serious
business practice issues, but it would also lead to various forms of
anarchy.
2. Surely, there is a group of people who are governing the direction
which Mozilla is taking. Any suggestions for improvement would have
to be vetted by at least a majority of this group prior to accepting
it as a valid change to the code. I was taken by surprise by this
person's stance which seemed to go against that grain. Had they said,
"Thank you for your suggestion," and left it at that I would have had
no further interest in pursuing reporting my issue with salting -
instead they, in a round about way, suggested that my "wish list" item
could be implemented if I paid his company money. This doesn't speak
well for the Mozilla community at large, which surely is an open
source community effort based on common feedback, agreement, and an
idealistic conception of software development rather than individual,
and capitalistic, "rogue" membership.
The above diatribe aside, the main purpose of this post is simply
to add my voice to the other's in the community who thing we need to
be able to override Mozilla's new profile salting behaviour in some
future release of code.
Jason.
