Re: MOTD in g-s-d

["William Jon McCann" <mccann jhu edu>]

On Nov 20, 2007 12:13 PM, Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com> wrote:
> On Nov 20, 2007 8:03 AM, Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> wrote:
>
> >
> > Does that solve everyone's worries?
>
> I still think its a useless legacy, and if motd ever changes, it will
> only serve to confuse users.
> But our Fedora motd is empty, so I won't complain any more if you care
> deeply about this.

Yeah.  And FWIW, here's another point of view.  At least for the last
decade or so I have seen  only two types of motd file:

 1. Distro provided
 2. Institutional / enterprise policy defined

In case 1, the file is really uninteresting and doesn't contain
"news".  In case 2, I'm fairly certain for the vast majority of cases,
the file contains some kind of legal notice, terms of use, etc and is
a often a reiteration of /etc/issue.  Again, nothing like "news".  Do
others have different experiences?  Or is it your intention to display
exactly this type of legal disclaimer?  If that is the case you should
almost certainly have way to allow one to check a box for "Don't
display this again".

While I agree in general that having a modern "news" messaging system
(a modern wall replacement perhaps) might be useful for institutional
users - it seems like using motd for this seems less than ideal.

Jon