Longstanding issues: structs & standalone Erlang

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

Douglas Philips <dgou@REDACTED> wrote:
	But it is worse than that, because usually installing new software  
	requires special priveleges (root, Administrator, etc.) and that is  
	not likely to be available when some user wants to have a new Erlang  
	module/application installed RIGHT NOW.
	
Sardonic laugh.  I'm in exactly that situation with respect to another
programming language.  I have to install it in my own area, and the
installation goes looking for all sorts of GNUish things where they
are put on Linux.  The maintainer basically told me that it's *my*
fault that installation took me a week (and still isn't right) for being
the only person to be using the package on Solaris without root access.

The web is an increasingly hostile environment.  This University's mail
servers are groaning under the weight of malware that they (usually)
filter out in time.  So there's a policy:  only one or two system
admins per department have root access to _any_ machine on the University's
net.  Not even our HoD has root access.  I'm sure this isn't the only
University, nor even the only organisation, nor even the only organisation
that develops software, that has such a policy.