Bug#501812: gnome-keyring: Disable graphical dialog when interacting with a shell

[Herman Robak]

On Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:19:18 +0200, tomás wrote:

> Thanks for the information. For now, it's XFCE for me anyway 
> (Gnome is diverging too much from what I feel comfortable with).

I guess I have to return to the habits I abandoned five years ago:  
Choose and configure some non-mainstream window manager, forgoing 
the niceties of a "desktop environment" and figuring out why lots 
of things don't "just work".  In other words; back to the 90s.
I can't afford to "get with the program", as I know it will get 
me screwed. 

But that's just me.
I shall consider the rest of the users from now on...

Modal dialogs that take focus away from _another_ application 
are disruptive, and they can lead sensitive data to the wrong 
place by accident.  We need less of them, not more.

Users will not accept responsibility for their actions if the 
OS trips them in ways like this.  Just look at the rampant 
denial permeating the user base of that other OS that you seem 
to be emulating here. 

Many users may have wished for those features, but this  
may be a good place to say "no you don't want that!" 


> I suppose this closes the bug 
> (not a bug, intentional behaviour)

I'm disappointed, too...

I can accept that the GNOME community wants this.
But Debian?  Do you really, really, really think this is 

- a good idea? 
- good hygiene? 
- good design? 
- usable?
- safe?
- enforcing good habits?
- protecting the user's credentials well?

GUIs are supposed to be user _friendly_.  That does not 
just mean easy and convenient, but safe.  Especially when 
it comes to private keys and passphrases.  If they turn 
out to be _less_ safe against user error, they fail to 
maintain the GUI comfort zone, their raison d'être! 

Considering "does it work out of the box?" and "is it 
easy?" is only half the story.  The rest reveals itself 
much later, when we discover permutations of user error 
and bugs that was rather hard to foresee.

However, some issues are not hard to foresee, as they 
have already been seen in that other OS.  Those issues 
tend to be labeled "expected behaviour".  Well, not to 
me, who has not used that OS since 1995...

Sadly, when a soft point in the user-system combination 
is "by design", it will only be fixed if is exploited 
rampantly.  And that is rather disingenious, since in the 
GUI realm, the user is an integral component of the system.

Increased exposure to abuse, deceit, theft and fraud should 
not be dressed up as empowerment and useability. 
Bosses expect their most trusted underlings to cover their 
butts.  Users expect their most trusted software to cover 
their butts, not just the OS's or the developer's.

-- 
Herman Robak