Re: GTK+-1.2.9 Released

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Sven Neumann <sven gimp org> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> writes:
> 
> > It includes setgid, however, the check does not kick in if it
> > the program has already dropped setgid privileges before initializing
> > GTK+.
> 
> it would solve a problem here if the check could be moved
> after the initialization of GDK to give backends the 
> possibility to initialize the display hardware with root
> privileques.

SVGAlib redux? 

I can make that change for HEAD (it obviously doesn't matter for
1.2.9) - and if you want it you should file a bugzilla.gnome.org
so I remember.

But I definitely feel that having GUI applications be suid root, 
even if they drop their privileges is not acceptable for a
general-purpose computer.

It might be OK for a simple single-user handheld or something like
that where the user/root distinction is just being used to protect
against accidental mistakes.

Then again, I have a pretty strong belief that a client-server
architecture is the right one for a windowing system on a general
purpose computer, so the above may not really be saying much new.

                                        Owen