Real-world non-alphanumeric usernames

Posted Dec 5, 2024 21:23 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Real-world non-alphanumeric usernames by rweikusat2
Parent article: Debian opens a can of username worms

No, that would not be fun, but still... appealing to email addresses as a reason to restrict usernames isn't a good argument. Some email systems store email in ways that don't necessarily depend on UNIX login names at all (for example, Cyrus IMAP.)

Real-world non-alphanumeric usernames

Posted Dec 5, 2024 21:59 UTC (Thu) by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920) [Link] (4 responses)

Email systems which weren't based on UNIX have existed since before UNIX gained any networking capabilities (AFAICT, even before UUCP) but that's besides the point. A UNIX system is also an email system and this system is based on using the UNIX username as local-part of an internet email address. That's just a technical fact people considering to extend the username syntax to include octets outside of the range of printable ASCII characters might want to take into account. Or not, depending on what their priorities are.

Real-world non-alphanumeric usernames

Posted Dec 5, 2024 23:26 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Email systems which weren't based on UNIX have existed since before UNIX gained any networking capabilities

I think the birth of email actually predates the birth of Unix?

Cheers,
Wol

UNIX and email

Posted Dec 5, 2024 23:47 UTC (Thu) by KJ7RRV (subscriber, #153595) [Link]

> A UNIX system is also an email system and this system is based on using the UNIX username as local-part of an internet email address.

I think I'm misunderstanding this part? It seems to mean that all UNIX systems are email servers; is that correct?

Real-world non-alphanumeric usernames

Posted Dec 6, 2024 0:15 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link] (1 responses)

> A UNIX system is also an email system

A fully POSIX-compliant UNIX system has an email system, though in the modern world, very few UNIX systems are connected to Internet email. I wouldn't say it's not UNIX if it doesn't have an email system. I removed mailutils, mailx, and mailcap from my Debian unstable system, and nothing depended on them. The concept of open access to email via Internet has been lost, and system-wide email isn't very useful on a single-user system.

Real-world non-alphanumeric usernames

Posted Dec 6, 2024 4:42 UTC (Fri) by KJ7RRV (subscriber, #153595) [Link]

Thank you! I didn't realize that POSIX requires email; that explains it.