XDC2012: Graphics stack security

Posted Sep 26, 2012 19:11 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: XDC2012: Graphics stack security by dlang
Parent article: XDC2012: Graphics stack security

Even the example of catching your interaction with a bank is not necessarily an evil thing

what if you are trying to create a video to demonstrate how to use the bank website?

This is why the mantra "provide mechanism not policy" exists.

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XDC2012: Graphics stack security

Posted Sep 26, 2012 19:35 UTC (Wed) by jg (guest, #17537) [Link] (2 responses)

And many people seem to forget that "Mechanism, not policy" does *not* mean that the default policy should be insanity.... I've seen many who seem to think it does.
- Jim

XDC2012: Graphics stack security

Posted Sep 26, 2012 21:24 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

agreed, having sane defaults for common use cases is a GOOD thing.

Just don't make the mistake of thinking that those common use cases are the only use cases.

I remember listening to you talk at some USENIX event a decade or so ago and talking about all the new things that were popping up on desktop systems (transparent terminal windows and similar IIRC) and you commented that when developing X you not only never considered such things, but if asked you would have said that it wasn't possible.

Because the mechanism was flexible enough, new things that the initial developers never imagined were possible.

It seems like a lot of people have forgotten that.

Ubuntu is the force that it is today, not because they were doing any hard technical things that nobody else was doing, but in large part because they were offering sane defaults (with some technical effort in automating configs and device detection) that nobody else was doing at the time.

XDC2012: Graphics stack security

Posted Sep 27, 2012 10:03 UTC (Thu) by Siosm (subscriber, #86882) [Link]

> Just don't make the mistake of thinking that those common use cases are the only use cases.

As said in the article, the goal in not to prevent people from adding things to Wayland/Weston, but to deny access to security-related features by default, and to provide a way for distribution/developers to make sure access to those features is allowed, by default, only the applications really requiring it, not just any application.