From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/50012 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: User-Agent string (was: Changes committed gnus/lisp (ChangeLog gnus-msg.el gnus-sum.el)) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 14:23:50 +0100 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <87d6m2ywwq.fsf@unix.home> Reply-To: reiner.steib@gmx.de NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1044969758 17047 80.91.224.249 (11 Feb 2003 13:22:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 13:22:38 +0000 (UTC) Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18iaMt-0004Qf-00 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 14:22:35 +0100 Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu ([129.7.128.10] ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 18iaOR-0004Kx-00; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 07:24:11 -0600 Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Tue, 11 Feb 2003 07:25:08 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (sclp3.sclp.com [66.230.238.2]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id HAA01930 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 07:24:55 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: (qmail 15639 invoked by alias); 11 Feb 2003 13:23:53 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 15634 invoked from network); 11 Feb 2003 13:23:53 -0000 Original-Received: from theotp5.physik.uni-ulm.de (134.60.10.145) by 66.230.238.6 with SMTP; 11 Feb 2003 13:23:53 -0000 Original-Received: (from ste@localhost) by theotp5.physik.uni-ulm.de (8.11.2/8.11.2) id h1BDNoh29932; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 14:23:50 +0100 X-Authentication-Warning: theotp5.physik.uni-ulm.de: ste set sender to 4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de using -f Original-To: ding@gnus.org X-Face: 3Phac&+dw=IZHjhua]bp}LH<*p{qzj8u+ Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen writes: >> Well, thinking this over a bit, it seems that the only reason for >> exposing the system type is to make it easier to see whether people >> are using Windows, > And also Mac, these days. >> so that we can adequately, er, help. So it's a kind of debugging >> tool. > > Another useful purpose is doing statistics (which is also mentioned in > Usefor). I think "What's the percentage of Unix/Windows/Mac > Gnus-users?" would be a reasonable question to try to answer. > >> I'm not quite sure that's important enough a reason to expose this >> information. `system-configuration' was added 2001-10-22 and I've never seen any complaints against it (some people were surprised that i?86 doesn't reflect their running system --> built system). I think that it's both, quite save and useful to use `system-type' and enable this by default. Exposing the system is helpful quite often. To make it easier for the user to expose less information, we could add something like this... --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- (defcustom gnus-user-agent 'full "Which information should be exposed in the User-Agent header. Can be one of the symbols `full' \(show full information\), `emacs-gnus' \(show only Emacs and Gnus version\), `gnus' \(show only Gnus version\) or a custom string. If you set it to a string, be sure to use a valid format, see RFC 2616." :group 'gnus-message :type '(choice (item :tag "Show full info" full) ;; system-type (item :tag "Show Gnus and Emacs versions" emacs-gnus) (item :tag "Show only Gnus version" gnus) (string :tag "Other"))) --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- If we can reach consensus about this, I'll send a proper patch for `gnus-extended-version' (BTW, the current User-Agent header is b0rked, if `gnus-version-expose-system' is non-nil). > But `system-type' is so generic that it doesn't reveal very much. > E.g. my Digital Unix box is listed as just "berkeley-unix" (I doubt that > would help an attacker much :-), and all the different ms-windows > versions are "windows-nt". ACK. Most other multi-platform MUAs and news readers expose the system (or even more) by default, e.g. Netscape/Mozilla, tin, slrn, ... Bye, Reiner. -- ,,, (o o) ---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW http://rsteib.home.pages.de/