As you say plenty of good points so rather than repeat lengthy arguments for or against I'll keep it simple and just say I don't think it should be described as a bug as it was implemented this way. Bad choice maybe but it's a feature change.
Having said that I do think it should be seriously considered for the release branch because of it's small footprint and improvement on a very weak and insecure area. Ray Dan Shields wrote: > Thanks Jacques. Is there any further action by me that might be > advised? I was wondering because I was considering declaring a > referendum on the issue on the user list as per David Jones' > suggestion. > > Wow I guess that what we have here is "the absence of this new feature > is a bug". > > I must say, the dev-debate that it has inspired has been impressive! > There are good arguments both for viewing the patch as a bug, as well > as equally good arguments for viewing it as a feature. It really > surprised me because up until that point in time (when I blindly > stumbled into this) my view was entirely to think about it as a bug > only. The author of OFBIZ-1106 never knew the difference between > 'code that failed to hide the password' and 'the complete absence of > code that successfully hid the password', he just knew that the > software did not do 'as it should', and this was exactly my point of > view in devising a solution as well. It requires a strong > metaphysical argument to even tell the difference between the points > of fact that might exist in the software that would reveal the actual > intent of the original design. My feeling is that it was either > overlooked accidentally, or it was not convenient to declare the XUI > XPage in a manner that made sense to have both regular input and > password input in the same node of the tree but at different times > (this convenience is what I provided in the patch). > > As I said above I am willing to take this to the user list and invite > all users who run a release4.0 branch to submit an accept/reject vote, > as I think this feature/bug (or bug/feature) is important enough to > the success of release4.0 to warrant. > > I am happily sitting on the fence and content to let this issue go > either way. I am finding it fascinating. > > Cheers all > Dan > >
