[Info-vax] Why is INSTALL.EXE privileged?

[Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER]

The nice (youtube) video on openvmshobbyist.org reminded me of a question I
had (in the 80ies and) long forgotten:

Why is INSTALL.EXE installed with privileges?

Privileges are required to get sensitive information for users without
them (to modify things, users then needs privileges of course).
But why is it a requirement for a normal user to get these informations?
Why isn't INSTALL.EXE (and INSTALHLP.HLB either) set to WORLD: at all?


Btw: I did my first lesson on VMS in the early 80s (on V2.3 or V2.4)
and one of the first things I could (later) teach my system mangler was
how to use the DISKQUOTA.EXE (because I was able to read its help,
while he doesn't even know of disks quotas at all). I was happy then,
but I also wondered why I was able to read such informations destined for
system managers (but not for ordinary users).

Last time I checked, VMS still distributes these files that way. But why?
(For most system guys, this is no real problem, as they do, like me, change
the protection of most files on the system disk by hand to more restricted
after fresh VMS installations - if they don't duplicate system disks at all)

-- 
Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTÖGER
Network and OpenVMS system specialist
E-mail  Peter at LANGSTOeGER.at
A-1030 VIENNA  AUSTRIA              I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist