• Bug#50303: www-data considered harmful

    From Chris Hofstaedtler@21:1/5 to Andrew Pimlott on Tue Jul 8 00:10:01 2025
    Control: close 50303

    Hi,

    On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 11:41:37PM -0500, Andrew Pimlott wrote:
    The www-data user and group should die. The hyphen is a gratuitous source
    of grief.

    [some examples where old programs cannot deal with "-" in user
    names]

    I'm going to close this report. 24.5 years later it's too late to
    change the "www-data" name. All knowledge that has been spread over
    the internet will be wrong if this gets changed, and I don't think
    that's worth it.

    Plus, on the shadow side I'd say we're favoring allowing _more_
    characters, not less. Broken programs need to be fixed, not worked
    around.

    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)